


101 Ways to Say "I Love You"

by papofglencoe, sirrah_sirrah



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Military, Angst, Best Friends, Christmas, Dry Humping, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Hollywood, Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark Smut, Marriage, Military, Oral Sex, POV Peeta Mellark, Smut, Virginity, Wedding Fluff, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-04-11 10:22:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4431575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papofglencoe/pseuds/papofglencoe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirrah_sirrah/pseuds/sirrah_sirrah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than one right way to tell someone you love them. </p><p>A collection of one shots alternately written by AO3 authors papofglencoe (Tumblr: papofglencoe) and sirrah_sirrah (Tumblr: peeta-pit).</p><p>Includes "Tempest," "Inevitable," "His Hands Were Carved By The Angels," "Love Story," "I Only Love It When You Touch Me, Not Feel Me," and "Basic Training."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tempest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By papofglencoe. 
> 
> A/N: Modern AU Everlark. All lyrics by Kate Tempest. Rated E for explicit language.   
> Prompt: “Pull over. Let me drive for a while.”

_“No wait, my hands are smoking on this hot tea cup_

_My heart is open, all I want is love._

_Love will prop you up_

_If you’re the type to feel what you touch.”_

Her voice is ethereal and raw, and there’s something about her words and the way she’s moving to the beat, commanding it, that resonates deep within my bones. I steal a curious glance over at Peeta to see if he’s enjoying himself half as much as I am- I don’t expect it, since coming here was my idea in the first place. But he looks positively captivated, his head bopping faintly to the driving rhythm of the bass. His pale blue eyes are transfixed to the stage, and as the spotlights dance to the music, his shaggy blond hair glows violet and crimson and chartreuse in turns. I’m a little taken aback by the realization that his hair would look good in any shade, and I’m thankful that the house lights are low and no one can see the traitorous blush that steals over my face at the thought.   

We’ve been friends for years, since we were kids, really, but lately I can’t help these mounting feelings of attraction I’ve been having for him. They’re ridiculous, I try to tell myself. I can remember the soft, sweet timbre of his preadolescent voice. I know that he double knots his shoelaces because half his childhood was spent splayed on the sidewalk in a faceplant. Then there was his teenage acne- awful, and made worse from all the sugar, and I know that’s why, as an adult, he won’t touch the stuff with a ten-foot-pole.

I know every embarrassing detail of Peeta Mellark’s life, and that in no way touches upon what he knows about mine.   

Like my voracious appetite for cheese buns from his family’s bakery… he knows that I can eat fifteen in one sitting because one time, in a dare, I plowed through that many before retching them back up onto his lap, of all places. He teases me about my awkward first kiss with Cato Taylor, our high school’s resident douchebag, next to the school’s rusted, reeking dumpster. I made the tactical error, never to be repeated, of describing to Peeta how Cato and I knocked our teeth together so hard in our misguided attempt to French kiss that I chipped one of his teeth (although, in retrospect, he kind of deserved it). And he knows that, at twenty-two, I’m still a virgin because literally every guy I have ever gone on a date with has gone barreling, screaming, for the proverbial hills because I am the most unpleasant, opinionated, cynical, and taciturn woman that has ever graced this green earth.

Although, for some reason, despite what Peeta knows about me and my disgraceful excuse of a life, he sticks around. The logic confounds me, and in fact there may be no logic whatsoever behind his affection for me. I should be eternally grateful for his friendship, and I am. Except it’s not what I want anymore, not exactly. Fine. It’s not what I want at _fucking_ all.  

No. If I’m being _totally_ honest with myself I have to admit that ever since Peeta graduated college and moved back home I have wanted to climb him like a goddamn tree. I can’t begin to understand what changed, but in the six months since I’d last seen him something fundamental definitely had. Overnight, it just occurred to me that I do not want to lose the boy with the cheese buns. I never want to go six months without seeing him again- I don’t want to go a single _day_ without him in it- and that, no matter how close we are, it doesn’t come close to filling the need I have for him.  

Over the past few months any time a girl has approached him, vapidly giggling at every last word out his mouth (and, fine, he is very clever, but I don’t think they comprehend half his jokes), I’ve wanted to claw their hair out and jam my tongue down his throat to claim him as _mine_. When they lob that painfully obvious softball his way to hook up, I want to climb behind a semi and haul ass right over every single one of them like the annoying speed bumps that they are. It doesn’t exactly help that Peeta is conventionally attractive in every way, and that the girls who approach him are abundant in number and generally very beautiful. They’re nothing like me, anyway, with my lanky dark hair and underdeveloped curves (or total lack thereof). Sometimes I allow myself to hope at how he graciously, unfailingly declines their offers, and if he’s been dating anyone, he’s been unwittingly merciful enough not to mention her to me. But I simply can’t imagine a world in which Peeta, my lifelong friend, would find me remotely attractive if none of the other girls merited his attention. Whatever hope I allow myself to feel, then, is mixed with equal parts of total despair. He doesn’t want them, great. But then there’s no way in hell he’d ever want _me_.        

I steal another furtive glance to take in the full sight of him. I allow myself exactly two seconds to rake my eyes shamelessly over his body, starting with his exquisitely long eyelashes, the sharp cut of his jaw, his broad, muscular shoulders, his athletic frame (just a handful of inches taller than mine and so unbelievably perfect for hugging), his sinuous arms, crossed comfortably against his chest, his compact and chiseled waist. I’m admiring the shape of his ass when I get busted.

I can feel Peeta look down at me, and my body grows tense from the expanding awareness I have of how close we are standing to each other in the thick crowd, of how, when I look up to meet his amused gaze our faces are just inches apart. Physical proximity to Peeta has never been a problem for me in the past, and now it’s the most delicious agony I can possibly imagine. I can’t handle it all, but not for a second would I want to be anywhere else.  

He leans in toward me, cupping the side of my face to hold my ear close to his mouth, and I’m glad that the thumping music is too loud for him to hear me gasp at his touch. His thumb is dangerously close to my mouth, and I fight the urge to grasp his hand and kiss it. Something hungry and fierce in me wants to take his thumb and draw it into my mouth, to lave it with my tongue.

“Do I even want to know what you’re thinking right now?” he laughs into my ear, adding, “I totally have something stuck to my ass, right?”

Unable to speak, I pull away slightly and shake my head vociferously, as if to will away the blood that’s rushing to my face again. Stupid, stupid, traitorous face.  

I meet his eyes, and my god they’re sparkling at me. I don’t know if I can trust my voice, but I have to come up with some sort of reply or the jig is up. “Oh, I uh... “ Shit. I’m so bad with words. _Why can’t you come up with something, Everdeen?_ I blurt, unconvincingly, “I was just eyeing your hoodie because I’m cold.”

He arches an eyebrow, incredulous. “Really? Because I’m sort of dying over here,” he yells over the music. I take in the sight of his face, the bright pink splotches covering his cheeks from the heat. Thankfully I have a valid excuse to be flushed... at least _those_ odds were in my favor.  

I’ve told him a bald-faced lie, shoddily executed. In the crush of people surrounding us in the poorly ventilated hall, it must be a hundred degrees on the floor. I twitch uncomfortably because it feels like the temperature has climbed another ten degrees in the past few seconds. I cross my arms defensively, expecting to be called out on my bullshit, and it’s fortunate that I do because Peeta’s skeptical expression is replaced with one of sympathy.

“Okay, wow. I guess you must really be cold. You know how to keep me guessing, Katniss,” he chuckles, and before I can object, he’s hastily removing his hoodie and sliding it over my head.

The cotton fabric of the well-worn garment is deliciously soft against my skin, and the fabric radiates heat from his body into mine. I greedily soak it up, relishing the sensation, and without even thinking about it, I hold up one of the sleeves to my nose and drink in his smell: musky and tinged with the scent of baking spices. It is as tangible a reminder of our history together as the boy standing next to me.    

He appraises me with something that looks like pride, but must really be bemusement, and he leans in again. He speaks into my ear, sending vibrations coursing through my body, “It looks like you’re swimming in that thing.”

It’s true. The hoodie is several sizes too large for me, and it can’t be a flattering look compared to all the busty girls standing around in their skin-tight dresses and skinny jeans and crop tops. I look down at myself disparagingly and shake my head. I laugh and try to sound casual when I answer, “Yeah, I’m not much to look at, right?”

His eyebrows shoot upward, and he looks away, seemingly embarrassed. I guess I put him in an uncomfortable situation by making it a sound like anything other than the rhetorical question it was. He shakes his head, and I can’t be sure, but he mouths something to me that sounds something like, “You really have no idea, do you?”

I don’t know what he means by that other than that I am a hotter mess than I even realize, and I’m uncomfortable by the scrutinizing look he’s giving me, so I turn away, wrapping my arms around my body, and close my eyes to savor the music.  

 

_It’s true if you believe it_

_The world is the world,_

_But it’s all how you see it._

_One man’s flash of lightning ripping through the air_

_Is another’s passing stare, hardly there._

I’m listening to her words, the irrefutable cadence of her speech, and the raw power that drips from every frustrated syllable; I’m reveling in her abandon, feeling like the anger and sadness of her soul have become mine when I feel it. A strong, familiar arm falls upon my shoulder, gently but firmly drawing me in. I would know that touch anywhere, and I keep my eyes closed as Peeta pulls me in against his body. He rubs my arm tenderly and quickly, trying to warm me, and he speaks into my ear in what feels like a whisper, “You’re trembling. Are you okay?”

He presses his palm to my forehead to check for a fever. I certainly feel feverish and afflicted, but I know I’m not ill. Satisfied that I’m not burning up, his palm drops away, and the minute it leaves my face I miss his touch.

I press my face against his chest, and I allow myself to feel so impossibly blissful there for a moment. Nobody’s arms have ever made me feel this safe. I know that nobody else’s arms ever will.

“Katniss,” I hear him say over the din, his voice sounding a warning.

I cut him off and look up at him, unwilling to hear him say the words I already know. _Just friends_. I get it. That’s what we are. I change the subject before we say anything that will ruin what it is that we do have. “It’s just… her voice. It’s so hypnotic. It’s mesmerizing… I could get lost in it,” I tell him.

He shrugs dismissively and says, “It’s all right. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m really enjoying the music, and I’m glad you forced me to take you to this.” He squeezes my shoulder reassuringly, and I stare up at his face uncomprehendingly. _Take me to this?_ Since when has Peeta _taken_ me anywhere as opposed to us just _going_ somewhere together?

When he sees that question etched onto my face, he grows serious, and I’m certain that he looks nervous as he takes his left hand from his pocket and pulls my face back against his chest. He holds me there, gently, and when the music halts between songs, he murmurs into my hair, his voice faltering, “But her voice is nothing compared to yours… The first time I heard _that_ , I was a goner.”

I feel faint, and I’m sure he can hear my heart thundering in my chest, threatening to explode. Is Peeta saying what I think he is?

I look up at him questioningly, imploringly, and I melt at the sight of the vulnerable boy before me. I know then, as certain as I know him, how he feels about me. It’s drawn on every lineament of his face. Peeta loves me too, as surely and profoundly as I love him.

I clutch his t-shirt so tightly with both my fists that my knuckles turn white. I stand up on my tiptoes and whisper fiercely into his ear, “Pull over.” And then I lead him, still grasping his shirt, to the back corner of the venue.

I push him into the corner and step toward him, my breath uneven and shaky.

“For how long?” I demand, needing to know.

“Since forever,” he says, the words scratching their way out of him, scraping his throat on their way, making each letter raw and fragile.

I’m terrified of what he might say, but I’m suddenly overcome with a need to know something else about him, something I’ve never had the courage to ask before. “And have you ever?” I ask, unable to finish the question but knowing he will understand exactly what it is I’m saying.

He shakes his head, once, emphatically, as answer, and I feel my body sag with relief against his. Because if he’s loved me forever, and I’ve loved him, then I selfishly want him just for myself... because he’s everything that I’ve been waiting for, and, as it turns out, that’s what I’ve been to him, too.     

He reaches out for me, clutching my hips to draw me against his body. I can feel the pressure of each finger digging possessively into my hipbone through the fabric of his hoodie, and I want nothing more than to feel them against my bare skin. I want know what Peeta’s hands would feel like dancing across every inch of my body to their own beat.

I hold his face in my hands, forcing him to lock eyes with me. In the dark of the corner his eyes are all pupil, and he looks at me hungrily, like I’m something that he could devour. And I want him to, so badly. I want to know what it will feel like to be devoured by Peeta Mellark. That will happen soon enough. For now, I have another request.

I whisper into his ear, pressing my lips to the ridges of his earlobe, “Let me drive for a while.”

He swallows with effort and nods, and then I press my lips to his, nudging them apart with my tongue. I groan as I taste him, as delicious as I had imagined, and our tongues dance fervently together as the music thunders in the background. He wraps his arms around me, clasping me tightly against his body, and, protected from watchful eyes by the shadows of the room, we explore each other, locked in a melody of our own making.    

_She said nothing,_

_She raised her eyebrows_

_Like he did on the night they met._

_In this way they spoke at length,_

_And his heart heard what her eyes said._

_He said nothing,_

_He just felt and hoped he was understood._

_Then she felt something in her melt,_

_And lightning flashed and thunder shook_


	2. Inevitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A collaboration between AO3 authors papofglencoe (Tumblr: papofglencoe) and sirrah_sirrah (Tumblr: peeta-pit). Papofglencoe will write the odd chapters, sirrah_sirrah will write the even ones. Each chapter is intended to be a distinct vignette illustrating 101 different ways for Everlark to say "I love you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By sirrah_sirrah
> 
> A/N: Modern Day Everlark AU. Sorry for the wait and I hope it doesn't disappoint!  
> Prompt: "It reminded me of you."

I shouldn’t be at all surprised to see him here. It’s not an odd thing at all that he would attend his cousin’s wedding. I don’t know why the thought never crossed my mind. They had always been close, and after all, I met Peeta because of Madge. I suppose her wedding would be the only thing that could get him to return to this town.

 

Other than Madge, I was the one tie he was willing to keep here, but I cut it before he left. I had a stockpile of reasons that I used to justify my decision, but all of them were just a cover to help me hide the fact that I was absolutely terrified of how much I cared about him.

 

I try not to stare while I wait for Johanna to return from the bar with our drinks, but it’s useless. My gaze is drawn to him like a moth to a flame. I shoved everything about Peeta Mellark into the dark recesses of my mind years ago, but with him just across the room I feel every wall I built start to crack and crumble to dust.

 

He looks good. No, great. He wears his suit well, and with his jacket off, I can easily see how he’s grown into those broad shoulders that were always slightly awkward in his teenage years. The angles of his face are sharper and his hair –

 

“Hello? You there, Brainless?” Johanna waves a hand in front of my face, effectively pulling my attention away from him. My cheeks sting with a blush at getting caught.

 

“How long have you been there?” I ask, picking up my glass and take a sip. I’m not sure what she got me, but it’s strong so I’ll take it.

 

“Long enough to see you ogling Bread Boy.” She laughs at my scowl. “You knew he was going to be here right?”

 

I shake my head. “Madge never mentioned it.” I can’t be upset with her about it. She’s been so busy and stressed with planning this wedding and warning me about his presence was probably the last thing on her mind.

 

“Well, there are a lot of people here. Chances are he won’t even notice you.”

 

It’s almost like the universe has decided to give me a big plate of fuck you today because as soon as she says it, his head turns and our eyes lock. His eyes widen slightly as his mind realizes who he’s staring at. I feel my blush deepen and I’m the first to look away. I chug the rest of my drink before telling Johanna that I’ll be outside. I’m in desperate need for some fresh air.

 

It’s a little chilly outside, but I welcome it. The cool air feels good on my flushed skin. I find a bench near the entrance and sit down with a sigh. I was a fool to think I had ever gotten over him, although if I’m being completely honest I knew I wasn’t. It was just easier to believe when he was on the other side of the country.

 

I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and bury my face in my hands. I have no one to blame for all this but myself. I am the one who said the words that broke us apart. I broke his heart and broke my own in the process.

 

“Hey.” I look up and there he is, looking at me with those blue eyes that haven’t changed one bit.

 

“Hey,” I reply as I sit up. It’s awkward, neither of us really knowing what to say. He gestures towards the seat beside me.

 

“Mind if I join you?” I shake my head and he sits. Having him so close has me feeling a whirlwind of emotions. The air between us is awkward and we sit in silence before he asks how I’ve been. I answer and we engage in small talk for a few moments. He tells me how he graduated in May and has moved back to help out with his parents’ bakery while he searches for an open teaching position.

 

I tell him how Prim is headed to Capitol U. He offers up his congratulations and our conversation tapers off.

 

“Katniss?” I turn and face him. “I just…I need to know what happened.”

 

“Peeta, I don’t –“

 

“Please don’t avoid the question. I gave you what you wanted and I left you alone, so please do this one thing for me and tell me why I lost you.”

 

My eyes fall down to my lap and I try to swallow down the lump forming in my throat. He waits while I try to articulate a response. He deserves the truth, so I tell him.

 

“I was scared.”

 

“Of what?” he asks softly.

 

“Of everything.” I worry my bottom lip while he waits patiently for me to continue, somehow sensing that I’m not done. “My mom had just died and I had Prim to look after –“ My voice cracks and the lump in my throat is making painful to talk. I take a deep breath and force myself to continue. If I don’t say any of this now, I know I never will. “Everyone leaves and I figured it would be better to end things before you came to your senses and left me too.”

 

“And what exactly was I supposed to realize?”

 

“You deserve better, Peeta. You always have,” I answer softly. I find the courage to look at him, trying to figure out what he’s thinking but he’s always been better at hiding what he’s feeling than I ever was.

 

“You really have no idea the effect you have,” he sighs, shaking his head. He runs a hand through his hair. “Katniss, I’ve loved since we were kids. That day we met, at Madge’s house? When my dad picked me up I told him that I was going to marry you one day.”

 

I roll my eyes at him. “Peeta, we were six.”

 

He laughs. “My understanding of marriage wasn’t exactly accurate, I’ll admit that, but I meant it. That never went away, Katniss. You’re all I ever wanted.”

 

He used to say things like that, when we were young and dumb and driven by the cheap lust that pumped through our veins. I’d always shied away from his declarations of love, not allowing myself to fall for him. It had happened anyways. He had taken root inside of me and refused to leave, even after I broke things off.

 

His gaze shifts from humorous to longing. “I don’t want to make the same mistake my father did,” he whispers, leaning closer. My eyes flit down to his lips and I wonder if they taste the same.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“He let the woman he loved slip away.” And then his lips are on mine. His kiss is soft but its effect is absolutely powerful.

 

It doesn’t take long for the four years of repressed feelings to take control and soon my fingers are curling in his hair while his tongue fights with mine. He does taste the same with the extra bitterness of whatever he was drinking.

 

He breaks the kiss when we are both breathless, but he stays close, resting his forehead against mine. “I really missed you, Katniss,” he breathes on my lips.

 

“I missed you, too.” And I did. He was my best friend before we were anything else. I missed his friendship as much as I missed the other aspects of our relationship.

 

He’s smiling when he finally pulls away and captures my right hand in his and stares down at my middle finger where the ring he got me for my eighteenth birthday rests.

 

He bites his bottom lip before looking at me with a shy smile. “You still have this? I figured you would have, you know, gotten rid of everything.”

 

“I kept everything, Peeta. It reminded me of you.”


	3. His Hands Were Carved By The Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katniss Everdeen finds herself desperately searching for presents three days before Christmas. She never expected she’d find exactly what she wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By papofglencoe
> 
> A Christmas one shot. 
> 
> A/N: Rated M for explicit language and sexual innuendo.  
> With many thanks to my lovely betas jennagill and dandelion-sunset and to myusername for pre-reading.  
> For allhailthehutch and for lifeloveanddance for the title and inspiration.   
> Prompt: “No, no, it’s my treat."
> 
> Song lyrics by Mariah Carey

His hands were carved by the angels.

Or something.

I don’t know why the thought occurs to me. Blame it on the Christmas carols manically piping over the loudspeakers, because there’s nothing particularly heavenly about my current situation. In fact, this might actually be Hell. It’s three days before Christmas, and here I am, swimming in a cesspool of humanity, dodging elbows and sloppy, uncovered sneezes, as I stalk through the mall in a futile attempt to locate the _perfect present_ from among the detritus of all the _shit that’s left_.

Maybe it’s desperation, maybe it’s the fact I’m crammed in my thick winter coat like a sausage in its casing, but I’m covered in sweat and ready to say fuck it all when my eyes lock on a kiosk in the middle of the crowded hallway.

Fine. That’s a lie.

They lock on _him_. And, specifically, on his hands.

He’s a sea of tranquility in a goddamn ocean of discontent. The spotlight of the kiosk looms directly over where he sits, bathing him in a tungsten glow that filters through the locks of his wavy blond hair and washes over the wide expanse of his shoulders. Oblivious to the turmoil around him, he leans his elbows lightly on the kiosk counter, perhaps to steady them, and bites his lip in concentration as he paints the glass ornament clutched in his left hand.

Oh, lord. His _hands_. I gaze, mesmerized, at his broad, thick-fingered, capable hands that hold, so delicately, the fine-bristled paintbrush and glass ball. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had a man’s hands on me in… a while, but the way he handles that ornament is something sacred and profane.

He makes the paintbrush skate across the smooth surface of the ornament, an elegant ice dance worthy of the Olympic Games. His artwork is abstract, all swirls and smudges and squiggles, but as I make my way toward him, pushing slowly against the crowd, I discern he’s painting a sunset. Not a sunset as I see it with my eyes but rather as I _feel_ it, buried somewhere deep within myself, in some primal, secret place. He paints the sun like he knows what it feels like to burn alive inside of her, as if he were cradling her in his arms while she gasped one last time, collapsing finally into the horizon.

The ambient noise of the mall is deafening, an incessant, roaring mass of bickering shoppers and bawling babies, but somehow he senses my approach. It occurs to me, as his pale blue eyes fix on me and a crooked grin inches onto his face, that he must have noticed me watching him in the reflection of the ornaments hanging on the wall in front of him.

Well, that’s fucking embarrassing.

Despite my mortification, I realize I’m now committed to talking to this person who bears a striking resemblance to an archangel. The more I look at him, the more convinced I am that he is the inspiration for all those songs about heraldic angels warbling joyous strains on high. If I had to sketch his face, it would be like this: a snowflake, pure and perfect in its intricacy, falling languidly from the sky, and landing on the pert button nose of some cherubic toddler. His face is angled, his jaw sharp enough to cut ice sculptures, but there’s nothing harsh or unwelcoming about it. It is open and kind and smattered recklessly with faded freckles, and a single strand of wavy hair hangs boyishly across his forehead. I resist the urge to brush it away for him.

“Hey,” he says, like he’s genuinely happy to see me and that it has absolutely nothing to do with needing to off-load shelves full of merchandise rapidly approaching their sell-by date.

Damn, he's good at his job.

I bite the inside of my cheek, scowling as I think about how disheveled and shabbily dressed I am, how my clothes hang on what must look like a twelve-year-old boy’s body, and I try to feign something like indifference. “Hey,” I echo, impressed by how calm I sound even though it feels like my stomach is being raptured to the sky through my esophagus.

Gingerly, he hangs the ornament he had been holding onto a hook, now just one among the wall of similarly painted baubles, and turns to face me squarely. _Holy Sweet Reason-for-the-Season_. The guy is built. He looks to be about my age, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, and through the fabric of his white henley- _of course he would be wearing a henley_ \- I admire the outline of his biceps and delts as he crosses his arms against his chest. He tucks his hands beneath his arms, pressing his palms tightly against his ribcage. This posture emphasizes his shoulders, those hard muscles I find myself wanting to lick.

I never knew archangels were so glorious. No wonder all those virgins in the Bible seem to get themselves knocked up all the time. The thought makes me smirk to myself, and I quickly look down at my shoes to hide it.

Crossing my arms to match his posture, I drag my eyes back upward slowly, reluctant to meet his eyes again. _This is ridiculous_ , I admonish myself about getting tongue-tied and worked up over a mall kiosk boy. But here I am, checking out his soft worn leather boots, the relaxed fit of his jeans that make me wish they left a little less to the imagination, the snug fit of his shirt, the way the fabric protests as it stretches around his forearms, the nametag casually clipped to his shirt that reads “Peeta.”

What the fuck kind of name is that, anyway? _Peeta_. I turn the question around in my mind over and over, a tedious little game that enables me to pluck up the courage to make eye contact with him again. When I do, I notice his cheeks are flushed. From the heat of the mall, no doubt. His eyes flit away quickly.

He turns to the counter, swiping his forefinger along its surface, and I can’t help but notice, as his hand moves along its length, that his pinky finger is slightly crooked.

Those hands will be the death of me. Or so a girl could hope.

“What can I do you for?” he asks, clearing his throat, the sweet, honeyed timbre of his voice faltering charmingly on the last word.

It’s just an expression. An innocent question. But I’ve never been more thankful in my life for being trapped in a veritable sweat lodge. I know my cheeks are as flushed as his, but in my case it’s from imagining him pinning me up against a wall. Bless shitty ventilation and stifling crowds for concealing the spiralling thoughts of a trashy mind.

“Um, I’m not exactly sure,” I answer sincerely, shrugging apologetically as his eyes meet mine.

I’m still looking for gifts for my little sister Prim, who is floating around somewhere among the hordes of anonymous suburban teens, and for my best friend Gale. These are the two people I know best in the world. Buying them something for Christmas should be easy.

But I’m not good at buying something, apparently.

“Well,” Peeta says with a smile, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I _had_ to guess I’d say you were looking for an ornament or something.”

“Or something,” I counter with a laugh. I mean, am I really going to buy Gale an ornament for Christmas? As Peeta smiles back at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling, I realize _yes_. Gale’s getting a damn ornament, maybe a dozen. I’d take one of everything this boy has to offer.

Peeta cocks an eyebrow and nods. “Okay…. hmm.” He takes one of his divine hands and claws at the back of his neck, seeming to think of what to say next. “Well, you’ve come to the right place in either case.”

Now I’m the one who arches an eyebrow. Are we flirting? It’s been so long since a guy has flirted with me, I’m not actually sure. Naturally, then, I say the worst possible thing, instantly berating myself for not having paid better attention to how, exactly, the rest of my half of the species seems to know exactly when to bat its collective eyelashes and twirl its hair. “I hope so,” I tell him. “I’m sort of desperate.” I wince, hoping he doesn’t read too much into it, but if he’s picked up on the subtext he doesn’t let on.

“I’m sure I can help,” he assures me. He gestures with mock grandeur to the small kiosk behind him and chuckles. “As you can see we have the widest selection of personalized ornaments this side of the Mississippi.”

“I hope they’re doing better on the other side,” I deadpan.

My comment takes him aback, making him laugh. The sound is natural and easy. I’m still having a hard time looking at him without hyperventilating, so I drift past him and stand in front of the display of ornaments, scanning it for one Prim might like.

Peeta stands next to me, his shoulder almost brushing mine. Heat radiates off him like a blast furnace, making me feel feverish and for some reason _hungry_ , too— or maybe that’s just from the scent of Cinnabon wafting throughout the corridor. I shuck off my coat impatiently, unable to handle the sensation of being smothered by it, and drape it over my arm to conceal my shaking hands.

“Let’s talk about what you’re looking for,” he offers, his face reddening a shade. I fight the urge to check my breath or underarms for perspiration. We’re so close I can’t help but feel something about me, some unpleasant observation, has embarrassed him. I try to shake off the thought.

“I wish it were that easy.” My eyes scan the rows of ornaments. Some of them are nothing more than tsotchkes, mass-produced families of snowmen in groupings of three and four with family names like “Smith” and “Taylor” emblazoned on their scarves as if to say your family, too, could be a grotesque and generic facsimile of something approximating humanity.

“Try me,” he shrugs.

I take a steadying breath and nod. “Okay. I need something for my sister and best friend. But,” I say, waving vaguely around me, “I don’t honestly know how any of this works.” It should be simple, I know. Things like this— buying personalized ornaments from seasonal mall vendors and talking to boys— are designed with the most hopeless of idiots in mind, but right now, standing next to him, I feel like the world’s greatest fool.

His voice is patient, his expression kind. “I’ll make it easy for you. Pick out the one you want, and then just tell me what you want me to do. It’s all fair game, whatever you want. I can paint the ornaments however you’d like.” He points to a placard listing the prices of the respective ornaments, and even though the pricing is color-coded so that even a toddler could figure it out, I’m too busy staring at his index finger, thinking about what that finger would feel like dragging a path down my body, what I want him to do to me with it, to care what any placard says.

“Don’t worry about the cost of personalizing any of them,” he adds. He jams his hands in his pockets, his Adam’s apple bobbing slightly. “I’m happy to do that for you for free.”

My eyes gravitate back toward the ornament of the sunset, and I can’t help myself, but I reach out and touch it, caressing its lines as if I were touching the hands of the boy who had painted it. “This is extraordinary. Really,” I murmur, mostly to myself.

He absentmindedly toes the base of the kiosk with his left leg, a bashful, self-deprecating gesture. As if someone like this were unaccustomed to praise. “Naw, it’s just an ornament,” he says, sounding embarrassed.

It’s my turn to laugh now. “No,” I argue, pointing dismissively to the rows of generic crap lining the top shelves. “ _Those_ are just ornaments. Most of them will end up at the Goodwill by next Christmas. But this…” I pause as I touch the sunset ornament, “this is something I’d keep forever.”

I can sense his blue eyes lock on me, searching my face. It feels like I’ve said too much, that this isn’t something you should confess to someone you’ve barely met. I correct myself, steering away from the truth. “I mean that this is something _anyone_ would want to always keep.”

I clear my throat, suddenly feeling like a few inches between us might help. A white ceramic goose catches my attention on the top row, and I use it as an excuse to give myself some room. Leaning up on my tiptoes, I grab it, a thought occurring to me. “You don’t happen to have a duck, do you?” I ask, looking at him, finally, for a reply.

He bites his lip in thought, a habit I’ve become desperately fond of in the space of just a couple minutes. I find myself wondering what that lip would taste like, how his teeth would feel biting my lip instead. “We’ve got a Donald Duck, if that helps,” he offers, hearing how lame the suggestion is as soon as he says it.

We both laugh. “Although that’s tempting,” I answer, “it’s all wrong. I thought maybe I could get a duck ornament for my sister Primrose.”

He frowns, an expression so slight and fleeting it’s gone before I almost have the chance to register it. He doesn’t follow the connection, and why would he?

I shake my head, realizing I should explain. “I call her ‘little duck.’ Just an old nickname, is all.” Thinking of her scrawny little frame as a child, the way her shirt tails would slip out of the waist of her school uniform skirt, brings an affectionate smile to my face.

When I look up, Peeta is smiling down at me, looking thoughtful. “I mean… I could paint you one,” he offers, crossing his arms as if to shield himself from a blow. Something about the words, about the way he closes himself off after uttering them, strikes me as intensely vulnerable.

“I’d love that,” I tell him, feeling so thankful I could kiss him. And I can’t help it, but I lose myself for a moment in his eyes, marveling at how their color reminds me of a frozen lake, with light flecks that look like winter sunlight glinting off the surface while other flecks are so dark they hold all the movement and restlessness of the murky deep. Tearing my eyes away before I do something stupid like cry over how pretty he is, I grab a plain silver ornament and hold it out to him. “How about this one?”

He gives a dimpled smile in reply and reaches out to take the ornament, his fingers brushing against mine as he takes it from me. A jolt travels up my arm and spreads throughout my body. I don’t know what the holy fuck he’s doing to me, but I know I need to get away before I break out in hives.

Peeta settles back onto his chair, one leg tucked under the footrest with the other dangling loosely, and turns the ornament around in his hands to assess where to start. He begins to draw with speed and dexterity, as if the outline of the duck were already there on the surface and he was merely tracing it. I envy the steadiness of his hands. Right now I wouldn’t have the strength or skill to hold a feather if it were superglued to my fingers.

A silence settles between us, an electric current that crackles and grates and threatens to drive me mad. Over Peeta’s shoulder I spot my escape, a chance to break from whatever it is that I’m imagining is happening. _Cinnabon_. The white letters glow like the Star of Bethlehem, calling me to a feast of glazed pastries.

I try not to stumble over my words and fail. “I— uh— I was thinking of grabbing a coffee and cinnamon roll while you’re working.”

He looks up at me for a moment, something like disappointment flashing in his eyes. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but he sounds crestfallen when he politely replies, “Okay. I should be done with this in, oh I don’t know, ten minutes? You can come back for it any time after that.”

I feel like I need a breather, a chance to reassemble my fraying thoughts, but I realize the last thing I want to do is disappoint Peeta— I suppose it can get lonely for him, working alone, and he must enjoy the company, even company as shitty as mine.

“Well… I was thinking I could grab you a coffee, too,” I offer as the idea springs to mind.

He doesn’t look at me as his hand resumes its dance across the ornament. But I see the small smile that twitches the corner of his lips. “Yeah, I could go for some coffee.” He nods toward a cupboard beneath the kiosk counter. “My wallet’s in there.”

“No, no, it’s my treat,” I insist. I can see that he means to argue the point, and that’s no good, no good at all, so I press on before he has the chance. “How do you take yours— any sugar, cream?”

He laughs in mock resignation, his eyes quickly meeting mine before he resumes painting. “I guess you can grab it... this time. Thank you. But no sugar or anything. Black is fine.”

“I’ll be right back then,” I promise and turn away, blushing at his words. _This time_. What kind of tease is that?

Cinnabon is understaffed— _because why would you need more than one person working on one of the busiest shopping days of the year?_ — and so the line moves slower than I had expected. If I thought that being away from Peeta would make me less jittery, I was gravely mistaken. As the twerp behind the counter plods through people’s orders, seemingly baffled by the concept of pouring coffee, I find myself shifting back and forth from foot to foot like a toddler who needs to use the toilet. Wanting— no, _needing_ — to get back to the boy with the ornaments.

By the time I’ve bobbed and weaved my way back through the crowd, Peeta has nearly finished. I don't know what I expected, but as I lean over him to place his coffee down I gasp at what his hands were able to create.

It's stunning.

The tawny feathers of the duck seem to shine in sunlight. It's eyes are soulful and deep. Peeta has nestled the duck in a bed of spring wildflowers— crocuses and daffodils and yellow and purple primroses. I've never seen anything so sweet and innocent. And it's a _duck_. On an _ornament_. I love him— I mean _it_. I love it.

“Oh, Peeta.” I can barely whisper the words.

He clutches his coffee and takes a noisy gulp. “Is it okay?” My eyes drift to the way he grasps the cup, how his thumb worries the lip of the lid.

“It’s better than okay.” I reassure him. “It’s perfect.”

It’s suicide maybe, but my appreciation makes me bold, so I lean in to take a closer look at the details, resting my hand lightly on his shoulder to brace myself. I can feel his muscles tense beneath his shirt, but he doesn’t move away from me. He stays close, his breath deliciously hot as his exhalations tickle my neck, and not only do I find myself not minding if his body heat makes me sweaty and flushed, I finding myself wanting it.

“How did you do that? Those flowers are gorgeous.” I don’t bother to hide the wonder in my tone.

“I— uh— used to decorate the cakes in my parents’ bakery,” he confides, sounding wistful.

While I’m this close to him I have to force myself to care about the ornament, to make a concerted effort to consider its beauty rather than his. I try, I really do, for several moments before I reluctantly force myself to pry my hand off his shoulder and back away.

“Bet all the other bakeries hated your guts,” I say.

Peeta blushes, a deep shade of crimson that even colors the back of his neck, and takes a deep, shuddering breath, wiping his hands down the length of his thighs. He hangs the duck ornament on a hook to dry, but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge my comment. “Was there— uh— anything else you wanted?” he asks, looking at his coffee and then, after what seems like hours, me.

“Ah, yeah.” I grab another ornament, this time a green one, and hand it to him. Do I imagine it, or do his fingers linger a second as he takes it from me? “Just one more,” I tell him. “For my best friend Gale.”

He smiles up at me. “Sure. What’s going on this one?”

I wrinkle my nose. It’s a long shot, but here goes. “Do you like _The Walking Dead_?”

Peeta laughs. “Sure. Who doesn’t? I mean, it gives me nightmares, but I don’t think I can trust a person who doesn’t enjoy a good zombie story.”

My smile matches his. “Same here,” I confess. “I love it, but god— the zombie nightmares.”

“Well,” he says, a playful gleam in his eyes. “In my case, it’s because I once got bitten by one.” He hitches his left pant leg up and taps the flesh of his calf— or where his calf _should_ be. Instead it’s a metal prosthesis.

I must gasp in shock because Peeta gives a hearty laugh. “What?” he asks. “Too soon?”

“No… no… I just didn’t…” I stammer, completely unsure of what to say.

He shakes his head to put me at ease and laughs. “Don’t worry about it. It’s completely fine.” He winks at me. “Just don’t start calling me Hershel.”

As if I needed another reason to love him— gallows humor.

“Okay, then, Hershel,” I say in what I hope is a flirtatious tone (although who the fuck could say for sure?). “Do you think you could paint Daryl shooting a crossbow? And at the bottom write ‘Gale’?”

His eyebrows dart up at the suggestion, a mischievous smirk crawling onto those full lips of his. I can’t help but notice a faint freckle on the tip of his nose. “She’s a fangirl for Daryl, huh?”

I don’t correct him by telling him that Gale is _technically_ a boy. It doesn’t matter, and I don’t want to give Peeta the wrong idea about my relationship with Gale... one that is based primarily on shooting arrows at living things in the woods, which we then take home and eat.

Shrugging, I just say, “Gale’s pretty good with a crossbow.”

“In that case, remind me not to piss her off,” Peeta chuckles, having already drawn the outline and jaw of Daryl’s head.

“Everyone pisses Gale off,” I retort, laughing wryly as I think about the world-sized chip on my best friend’s shoulder and how he would almost certainly despise this good-natured, charming boy.

I watch Peeta, admiring his seriousness of purpose, the way he can’t help but lose himself in the task at hand. He frowns as he paints, three vertical lines of concentration creasing his forehead. His eyelashes are so long and tangled they brush his cheek when he squints. As he sketches and shades, I fall into a reverie, losing myself in the Christmas music filling the cavernous corridors. I look around absently, watching the shoppers shuffling past us in oblivious bubbles of self-absorption.

_I just want you for my own,_

_More than you could ever know._

_Make my wish come true,_

_All I want for Christmas is you._

I don’t notice that I’ve been singing under my breath until Peeta’s breath hitches and his hands falter.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” I say, coughing to cover the sound of my own embarrassment, knowing that even my olive complexion and the heat of the mall can’t hide my blush this time.

“No,” he replies, his voice husky and low in a way I hadn’t noticed before. He puts the ornament and paintbrush down to wipe his hands again on his pants. “Don’t be sorry. It’s just— your voice— you can really sing.” He looks down, resuming his work, his hands adding color to Daryl’s skin, a warm shade of sand.

I don’t know why he isn’t laughing at me; I know I’d be if the roles were reversed.

“Oh, it’s nothing special. Please.” I laugh uncomfortably and notice the mannequins lining the storefront of Express. I’m devising a way to run and hide behind one without Peeta noticing when his voice calls my attention back to him.

“So… are you gonna tell me your name? Or do I need to call you something like ‘Wichita’?” His voice is casual, unhurried.

“It’s Katniss,” I tell him, and I can’t help but wonder how my name would sound on his tongue as I made him come.

It’s like he can sense my thoughts. He repeats my name as if to taste its flavor, the texture of it. “What kind of name is that?” There’s no judgment in the question, just curiosity.

“The one my parents gave me.” It’s the simple truth. I find a way to choke out a more complicated answer. “My dad picked it out for me.” It’s almost more than I can say, even these few words.

Peeta seems to know this, infers, like I inferred for him, that there is some unspeakable grief in my past, and he deftly changes the topic. “So, Katniss, aside from a couple last-minute gifts, what brings you—”

His question is interrupted by an enthusiastic squeal behind me. “Katniss! _Please_ tell me that’s for Gale! Because I can’t even.”

Prim bounds up to us and gives me a playful push. “It’s hysterical!” She looks at Peeta with appreciation. “You’re really good, you know.” She glances at his nametag and adds his name, an afterthought. “Peeta.”

He smiles warmly at the compliment and turns to me, almost proudly. “Is this your sister Primrose?”

She knits her brow in confusion for a second, uncertain how he could possibly know her name, before a dawning look of awareness spreads over her face. Her eyes scan the kiosk, landing on the hand-painted duck ornament almost immediately. She shrieks as soon as she sees it, turning to me and throwing her arms around my neck. “It’s adorable.” Her voice is muffled by my shoulder. “I absolutely love it.” She digs her fingers into my shoulder, the pressure conveying the depth of her sincerity.

“You’ll always be my 'little duck,'” I promise her, not allowing myself to become embarrassed by our saccharine display of affection.

As she holds on tightly to me, I chance a look at Peeta. He looks so miserably contrite for having inadvertently spoiled the surprise that I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

“I’m so sorry, Katniss” he mouths, as if he had anything to apologize for.

Prim pulls away and looks between Peeta and me, a wicked grin spreading onto her face as an awkward silence blooms between us. Peeta stuffs his hands— _those_ hands— into his pockets and clears his throat.

“So— um,” he gulps, “was that all you wanted?”

Prim answers instantly, the words bubbling forth from some infernal source as she looks at me. “I think you should have him do you next.” She smirks as she says it, the little shit, and looks inordinately pleased with herself.

He blushes at the words, his traitorous complexion betraying him.

Prim forges ahead, the picture of innocence. “You should paint an ornament for Katniss. Do you think you could paint her name on it? Or is it too long, do you think?”

Maybe I’m imagining it, but I think I detect the shadow of a smirk as he hangs Gale’s ornament on a hook to dry. “No,” he says, sounding confident, “it would fit.” His blue eyes meet mine, a playful gleam in them hinting toward something a little less shy and wholesome than I would have expected from him. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.

Prim glances at her phone and makes a show of nonchalantly noticing the time. “Katniss, I’m off to go see a show now. Do you need more time to—” she looks at Peeta and then back at me, “ _shop_ , or are you gonna come with me?” As she texts someone, she throws out, “He could, like, come with us too if you want. I don’t care.”

Subtle, Prim. Now my baby sister is asking boys out on dates for me.

“No, I’m sure Peeta has to work,” I say hurriedly, trying not to sound disappointed as I think about how, even if he didn’t, he’d probably be the last guy who’d want to go on a date with me. How he probably has a line of girls waiting to go out with him. Or how he probably has one girl who already gets to. “These ornaments won’t sell themselves,” I add, giving my best laugh and hoping it sounds sincere.

Some indefinable look flashes across his face. “True enough,” he nods, chewing his lip as his hands begin to make quick work of wrapping my ornaments. He moves as if he can’t get me out of his sight fast enough.

I quickly consider killing Prim, but I realize I’d have nowhere to stash the body.

Peeta gives me the total, some number that doesn’t fucking matter. I hand him my credit card, careful to clasp the corner so his hand doesn’t accidentally brush mine when he takes it, muttering “thanks for your help” in his general direction. It seems so inconsequential, the sentiment. I'd like to thank him for more— for having made me feel, for a short time, like I was someone worth knowing by someone like him. Even if it wasn’t real— just a commerce-based pantomime of real life.

As he hands my bag to me, he gives a small, polite smile. “Sure thing.” He pauses, looking at Prim briefly and then back to me. “It was nice meeting you.” He nods and amends this, “Both of you.”

Eager to escape the mortification I’m feeling, I walk away as quickly as I can toward the theater, not chancing a look back to see if Prim is following me. I hear her call out to me in exasperation as we approach the entrance adjacent to the mall food court.

“Katniss, can you hold the frick up?”

I whirl around on my heels to look at her, and for some reason there are tears in my eyes. I think they might be from shame. Or frustration. But surely not from disappointment.

When she sees I’m on the verge of crying, her expression softens. “What happened back there?”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I can’t. And she knows better than to press me. Instead I think about it during the show, stewing in it and drowning the misery of it in sixty-four sweet ounces of Diet Coke.

I let Prim pick the movie, something about war and revolution, self-sacrifice and the power of love to triumph over all, and blah blah. I suppose it’s entertaining enough, but for some reason all I can think about is the boy with the ornaments. How kind he was, how funny. His broad shoulders and bright blue eyes. And his _fucking hands_.

Two hours could have passed or two days, I neither know nor care, but before I realize it the credits are rolling and Prim and I are alone in the deserted theater. She turns to me, her face uncharacteristically stern. “Katniss, I’m a little tired of you cutting yourself short. Did you ever stop to consider maybe he _wanted_ to come with us and you shot him down before you gave him the chance?”

I shake my head, slurping the dregs of my soda through the crushed straw. “No. Not a guy like that.”

She snickers and shakes her head. “I don’t think you noticed the way he was looking at you.”

Some feeling washes over me at her words, something that strikes at my heart and radiates outward through my veins, warming me. I think maybe it's hope.

“We should go back,” she says with a conviction I can’t afford to entertain.

“No, I really don’t think that—” I’m about to argue with her, to go into the litany of reasons why her suggestion should be filed under “highly effective ways to creep out and alienate boys,” but she purses her lips and yanks me out of my chair, in no mood to brook arguments from me. Most days I look at her and see no familial resemblance, but at times like this, when she’s all steely resolve and determination, I think I see a little of myself. And it’s terrifying.

Prim drags me through the mall like a frustrated mother clutching the arm of a sulking child. I try to drag my feet, to take so long to move she either gives up or forgets her purpose altogether. But it’s no good. Soon— too soon— I’m back to exactly where I started. Frustrated. Sweaty. And ready to say fuck it all.

Anything I might have contrived to say to him during the ten minutes it took to get back to the kiosk disintegrates into ash the second my eyes lock on him. Any pleasantry, any the awkwardly phrased appeal to see him again, vanishes at what’s before me.

He’s closing up the shop for the night, his back turned to me as he padlocks together the flaps of the heavy canvas surrounding the ornament stand. I’m not rendered speechless by his magnificence, although the past two hours had been good to him.

No. I’m stricken by the three girls flocked around him like some strange parody of the Magii. By the look of them, they’ve traveled from their distant lands for the sole purpose of adoring him. The tallest, a viciously beautiful blonde in a dress that barely covers her crotch and ass, from the land of Forever 21. A slender, preppy brunette who looks like she plays with knives for fun, from the kingdom of The Gap. And the girl with no hair at all, pierced and tattooed, who I'm almost certain likes a little axe-play before sex, from the realm of Hot Topic. All three, even on their worst days, infinitely more attractive than I am. Me? I'm from some nameless slag heap, not good enough for mall real estate.

The blonde laughs loudly, the affected sound carrying through the din of the thinning crowd. She says his name— _Peeta_ — and from her it sounds flimsy and cheap, a disposable plaything. She touches his arm flirtatiously, resting her hand on his bicep, and I want to gag at the sight. Because, despite her stunning good looks, she still isn’t worthy of him. She’s not worthy of five-feet-from-him.

But then of course, if she’s not worthy of him, then what the fuck am I?

I watch the girls take turns flirting with him as he closes up shop, the way he smiles back. Occasionally, he checks his phone, stowing it in his back pocket. Probably waiting for a text from his girlfriend.

My shoulders slump in defeat, the game over. I'd say that guys like Peeta get their pick of the litter, but I'd be lying. Because there is no other guy like Peeta.

“C’mon, Prim, let’s go.” This time I’m the one tugging her arm, propelling her forward, desperate to walk past the kiosk and to the mall’s exit before he notices me standing there, gaping stupidly at him like a jackass.

I stumble out into the frigid night air, gratefully drawing in several deep breaths that scald my lungs, purifying me. It's snowing— it's _always_ snowing here, this time of year— and drifts of snow whorl around the freshly-plowed parking lot, eddies and vortices of ice that radiantly reflect the soft yellow light of the street lamps.

Silently, Prim and I walk toward my parked car, a thirty-year-old rusty Buick you couldn't miss from outer space. Our progress on the icy asphalt is slow, too slow, but the last thing I need right now is to end the night on my ass.

As I approach my car I rifle through my coat pocket for the keys, my numb fingers wrapping around the cool metal. I'm yanking on my frozen door handle, trying to pry the door open, when I think I hear someone calling my name from behind me.

The sound is hard to hear over the distant traffic and the gusts of wind that snap and howl in the night. The snow skitters noisily across the cement, a sharp tisking that is almost metallic. But no, I haven’t imagined it. I hear my name again, closer this time.

“Katniss, hold up!”

I whip around, nearly falling on the slick ground from the force of the movement. It has nothing to do with the ice when my knees wobble and threaten to buckle beneath me. I see him, rushing carelessly across the lot, coming toward me. He smiles when we make eye contact, a crooked grin matching the one that’s somehow found its way onto my face.

“Hey,” Peeta says when he finally reaches me. He jams his hands in the pockets of his wool overcoat, his shoulders hunched against the cold. A gust of wind blows across the parking lot, raking its invisible fingers through his wavy hair. The stubborn lock on his forehead, the one I love so much, blows straight up into the air.

“Hey.” I can’t fight the stupid smile that’s on my face, can’t bite it back. Because, for some reason I can’t explain, he’s standing in front of me when he could be anywhere with anyone else. A shiver runs through me at the thought, and I cross my arms tightly, trying to pass it off as the cold.

He jerks his head back, gesturing behind him toward the mall. “I, uh— I saw you walk past me just now.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t dare. Instead, I wait.

After several seconds he presses on. “I was hoping you’d stop by again before you left.”

I give a sharp laugh, sharper than I had intended. “I was going to, but you looked… occupied.”

Peeta frowns at my words, processing them. “Do you mean those girls talking to me? Because if that’s the case, I definitely wasn’t occupied.”

The way he says it makes me feel ridiculous, petty. His dismissal of them is thorough and absolute. I look down at my feet, suddenly unable to meet the question in his eyes. I can feel their weight on me, the intensity of his gaze warming me, sparking a fire in the pit of my stomach.

I want to apologize for my jealousy, but that would be admitting too much. So I stand silently, gnawing my lip, eyes cast downward in abjection. Behind me I can hear Prim’s teeth chattering, but to her infinite credit she doesn’t say a word this time.

It’s Peeta who finally breaks the silence. “I wanted to see you again,” he explains, holding a small bag up that matches the one in my hands. “I wanted to give you this.” He sounds nervous and perhaps a little sheepish.

I meet his gaze, noticing how rosy his cheeks are in the winter night. In the glow of the streetlamp he looks like an angel, golden and resplendent. Light flakes of snow cling to his hair and dust across the breadth of his shoulders.

I’m about to ask him why he would give me anything for Christmas when he reaches out and swipes a snowflake off my cheek with the pad of his thumb. It blazes a path across my face, branding me. The moment his hand touches me I am irrevocably, impossibly his.

“Merry Christmas, Katniss,” he says.

I choke out the only words that come to mind. Everything else is lost. “Merry Christmas, Peeta.”

He smiles, his hands disappearing back into his coat pocket. From their depths I can hear the nervous jangling of keys.

We say nothing, even though it feels like we’re both telling each other everything. He’s so close I could reach out and touch him, lean in and press my lips to his, but I’m too afraid.

He gives a slight shrug, as if to admit some mutual failing. “Well, see you soon, I hope,” he says, nodding and then walking away.

I watch him go, and as he disappears into the night, his broad frame growing slighter until it vanishes entirely, I can feel the invisible cord that connects us stretch painfully to accommodate the distance. I find myself hoping it can hang on— I don’t want to let him go.

After several moments of silence, Prim clears her throat noisily behind me. “So like what? Are we just gonna freeze to death out here or something?”

I shake my head once to clear my mind, climbing into the car and starting it up after several attempts. I place the bags between us on the front bench, feeling dazed. I still don’t understand what happened just now.

As the engine warms up and the windows defrost, Prim pokes my arm. “Well, are you gonna open it?” She picks up the bag Peeta gave me and shakes it.

“Hey!” I admonish her, snatching it from her. “Easy, okay? It could be fragile.”

Carefully, so as not to break anything, I open the bag and reach in, pulling out a parcel wrapped in tissue paper. I unroll the paper, my heart thundering in my chest. The ornament of the sunset falls into the palm of my waiting hand. Peeta has painted my name across the landscape, a long, winding vine capped off with a katniss flower.

I find a small scrap of paper folded among the tissue, and I open it as quickly as my shaking hands will allow. It has handwriting on it, a neat, sloping script that reads, “ _You are not pretty. You are not beautiful. You are as radiant as the sun_.”

I trace his writing, every letter that his divine hands touched, and bring the paper to my lips.

Peering through the frost-glazed window of my car into the night, I smile toward the hulking shadow of the mall. With just two days until Christmas, I know where I’ll be tomorrow.

I have a return to make...

Or something.


	4. Love Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based loosely off the prompt, "Can I have this dance?" Katniss wonders if Peeta has ever had second thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By sirrah_sirrah
> 
> A/N: I am so, SO sorry this took long! My inspiration was pretty damn close to zero. It's short, and sweet, and I hope you enjoy this little piece of fluff! Title is taken from this song here: https://youtu.be/ztPWIpgbGjI which I had playing on repeat while doing this little chapter.  
> Prompt: "Can I have this dance?"

She's never regretted the way they got married. She never dreamed about her fairytale wedding. Truthfully, she never thought she'd get married in the first place. But now, watching him and seeing how much fun he's having, she wonders if maybe they should have had a wedding. They could have waited instead of running down to the courthouse a few days after she looked at him and suggested they get married.

 

It seemed right at the time. They were scraping by, with barely enough money for groceries once all the bills were paid, and honestly, she didn't want to wait. She didn't see the point, and he agreed. But of course he agreed. He'd do anything to make her happy, and while she doubts he regrets it, she can't help but wonder if there's a tiny piece of him that wishes they had done it differently.

 

She's lost in thought, conjuring up all the different possibilities of what they could have done when he comes up and asks her dance, and while normally she'd decline, knowing she'd be much happier sitting at her table and watching, she accepts, because she can't say no to him just like he can't say no to her.

 

(It's disgustingly cute, if she really thinks about, but it's okay.)

 

He's got his hands on her waist, and her arms are around his neck, and they sway along to the music while he smiles down at her and kisses her forehead.

 

"Wanna tell me what's going on inside that pretty head of yours?" he asks her softly.

 

"Just thinking," she offers, but it's clear in the look he gives her that he expects more an answer than that. She sighs and bites her bottom lip, feeling incredibly stupid for feeling so nervous about asking this, but she does.

 

"Do you regret the way we got married?"

 

His brows furrow slightly, and he almost looks confused. "Do you?" he asks instead of answering.

 

"No, but I'm asking you, Peeta."

 

His lips curve up in an easy smile. "Katniss, all I want is you. And I got you. So no, I do not regret the way we got married."

 

He leans down and captures her lips and it's short and sweet but she can feel how much he loves her and she knows he's telling her the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr at peeta-pit and my co-author at papofglencoe


	5. I Only Love It When You Touch Me, Not Feel Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So where are you?” I ask, wondering if she’s under the same sky tonight, breathing the same dusty air. I’d like that, simply knowing we were in the same place together, for a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By papofglencoe
> 
> A/N: Everlark. Modern AU. Rated E for explicit language, graphic sex, and drug use. 
> 
> Inspired by “The Hills” by The Weeknd. Lyrics by Abęl Tesfaye. 
> 
> Contains dialogue from “The Jerk,” as well as direct and revised quotes from The Hunger Games books and films, none of which I own. 
> 
> Prompt: "I'll walk you home."
> 
> This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
> 
> For @joshs-left-earlobe and @everhutcher. I did my best. ;)
> 
> With many thanks to @myusernamehere, @jennagill, @dandelion-sunset, and @everlylark for your friendship and support and for calling me out on my bullshit. All remaining errors are mine.

************************************************

_I only love it when you touch me, not feel me,_

_When I’m fucked up, that’s the real me._

 

When my phone buzzes in my back pocket, I don’t even need to look to know it’s her.

“Hey,” I answer as quickly as I can—it’s been a while since we’ve actually talked. My voice is raspy, torn up from the whiskey and pot, and maybe also from thinking about what she asks me whenever she calls like this—when she’s too afraid to commit to writing down the thoughts resting on the tip of her tongue, worried that someone might see and then find out about what we do.

She doesn’t say hello back because we’re well past that, after all this time. “I—I can’t sleep,” she says, or at least I think that’s what she says. She’s hard to hear over the pounding bass, and her voice sounds hoarse, like she’s spent half the night crying or yelling to make herself understood. I don’t make her do either of those things, and that’s one of the reasons I know she’s calling me now—I glance at the time on my phone—at 4:51 a.m.

I take a look around me, trying not to notice that there’s three randoms fucking each other on my new couch, and focus instead on taking a headcount of the people crowded onto the impromptu dance floor that’s formed in the middle of my living room. It’s filled with friends and hangers-on I’ve met once or twice, a writhing mess of sweaty limbs and glazed eyes, a few dozen people, I guess, half of whom are rolling on Molly. It’s gonna be a nightmare getting rid of them all, but I’d do it for her if she asked me to.

A moan escapes from one of the women on the couch, the one with a half-shaven head who’s riding a guy with gold makeup as some other girl wearing a purple wig watches on, fondling her tits. When the moan mingles with the R&B and the liquor coursing through my veins, the absolute only thing I want in this world is for her to ask me to. _To just ask me to_.

“Hold on a sec,” I tell her, shouting over the music. Pinning the phone to my ear with my shoulder, I take my tumbler of whiskey and slide open the glass door that leads to my back deck, stepping outside to search for a quiet place where I can talk to her. The Santa Anas are blowing over the mountains, and the warm, restless wind rushing through the chittering leaves of the trees, along with the incessant sound of traffic winding its way down Laurel Canyon, doesn’t make it much easier to hear her. Her voice is as breathy as the wind, the silence that envelops her is deafening as the whirring engines of the cars and motorcycles—a wall of white noise and static that crackles in both my ears—too much of the same frequency to make sense of any of it.

“I’m so sorry, Peeta.” I can’t help but notice how her voice catches when she says my name, like a breaker crashing against the keel of a boat, destroying itself just to rock the inhabitants. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, no. Not at all. Never.” It’s not a lie, but it barely touches the truth. Even when I’m shitfaced and exhausted or jet-lagged and working on eight hours of sleep stretched out over three days, oblivious to what time zone I’m in or what continent I’m on, the mere sound of her voice sends waves of bliss washing over me, a coating of honey that drowns me in its sweetness. She could call me on my deathbed as I rattled and wheezed the last life out of my lungs, and it still wouldn’t be a bad time.

She sighs, and I don’t know if she sounds reassured or exasperated. “I can tell you’ve got people over. Shit—I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have called.”

She always says this. And my reply is always the same. “I want you to. Anytime.” When she doesn’t immediately say anything, I try harder to convince her. “Look on the bright side— at least you didn’t wake me up.”

She snickers, a soft sound of fond disapproval. “You never sleep.”

“No,” I chuckle, reaching into the breast pocket of my flannel shirt to retrieve the pack of cigarettes, pulling one out and cupping my hand to buffer the flame of my lighter from the breeze. I take a deep drag of smoke as arid as the desert air, and exhale before adding, “But neither do you.”

“That’s true.”

We sit in a companionable silence on the line for a minute, or perhaps for several. Time does funny things when you’re fucked up; it stutters and crawls and curls itself into a ball like some sort of crushed insect. And sometimes it gallops and skips and bends over backwards, a marauding contortionist that robs you of your life. But it doesn’t really matter how long she and I sit there, thankful just to listen to each other breathe. The sound of laughter wafts out of my house through the cracked windows, and I know that no one misses me. In this entire soulless city, under the expansive starless sky, who would miss me if I weren’t here? The thought doesn't sadden so much as free me, and I’m surprised by the pleasantness of it, the lack of obligation that comes along with knowing it.

“So where are you?” I ask, wondering if she’s under the same sky tonight, breathing the same dusty air. I’d like that, simply knowing we were in the same place together, for a time. She could be anywhere— London, Rio, Tokyo, New York— but she usually only calls when she’s in town, in case I happen to be too.

“I’m at home,” she tells me, but we both know that’s a lie.

Home is 2500 miles away, a tiny town tucked away in a very different set of hills. It’s a place where everyone knows your face and stops you as you go about your business, but not because they want selfies and autographs or to fuck your brains senseless or to tear you limb by limb and call it entertainment, but because they knew you when you were a kid, running shoeless in the fields with scabbed up knees and gaps in your teeth, your grass-stained, hand-me-down clothing hanging off your body like the little hillbilly you were, when you were a nobody but still a _somebody_ to them.

Now she and I are somebodies who are nobodies to anyone— not really, not in the way it matters, except to each other.

I rest my elbows on the railing of the deck, looking out through the canopy of trees concealing me, trying to catch glimpses of the valley down below. The lights of West Hollywood and, farther off, downtown LA flicker and twinkle like they are the stars that people flock here to see. If I didn't know better I’d almost say they look angelic, when in reality they are nothing but smoke and mirrors, lies in fluorescent and neon designed to make everything look prettier than it really is.

“So you’re home, and I take it Gale’s not?” I finally ask her, everything that I want to happen next hinging on the answer to that one question.

She makes a joyless, scoffing sound, so quiet and pained it sounds like she’s being strangled. “No. Of course not.”

I don’t ask where he is. It doesn’t matter. But she tells me anyway, sort of.

“He’s in Berlin right now doing promo. I guess it’s Madrid tomorrow. Or is it Paris? I don’t know. It’s already tomorrow in Europe, so who the fuck could say? I’m not his PA.”

Right. Not his PA. Something else, but not that. I shrug with a nonchalance I don't feel, even though no one can see it, and polish off the rest of my drink to fuel the fire raging in my gut at the mere thought of Gale Hawthorne. Of his hands on her, his dick buried inside of her, his sweat covering her skin. It never gets easier, no matter who it is. No matter that it isn't real, not like what we have. They come and they go, as disposable as the pages of the tabloids that splash their faces across them, but we’re the one thing that sticks, that’s family.

“Peeta,” she whispers, knowing me well enough to interpret my silence. “Can I come over for a little bit?”

“Yeah,” I answer without pause. “Okay.” I try not to sound too happy, even though her question makes my stomach somersault straight down the hillside, rolling and flipping and catapulting its way toward Sunset Boulevard like a possessed tumbleweed because, in the twenty years I’ve known Katniss Everdeen, there has never been a time when I wanted or even considered saying no to her. There has never been a time when the thought of seeing her didn’t have this effect on me. “For how long?”

There’s no annoyance in my tone, just hope. Ridiculous, fruitless, spirit-crushing hope. The kind that silently begs _forever_ , _always_ , _stay with me_ but that would settle for a week. Or a day. Or one night together, sleeping naked in each other’s arms.

She’s silent for a moment, the line crackling to fill the void. This—her silence and the labored connection holding us together— gives me all the answer I need. _A little bit_. That’s what she can give me. “The tour kicks off Monday. At the Staples Center.” She exhales, and I can hear the weariness of the road already on her. The fatigue presses down on her slight body until she’s as flat and worn as the asphalt itself, cracked and pocked but shabbily patched up because, after all, people need to use it.

“That’s great—I'm really happy for you,” I reply, giving one of the worst performances of my career. “How long are you going to be gone?”

“Christ… I think it's seven months… give or take a week or two.”

I sharply inhale, sucking in air between my teeth with a sharp hiss, my lungs gasping for oxygen because they’ve just had the wind knocked out of them. _Seven_ fucking months. We’ve never gone that long before without seeing each other, not since the day we met, when I was five and she was six and we were nothing more than hungry children, starving to be part of something bigger than ourselves. My eyes begin to water, and whether it’s from the fit of alcohol-induced nostalgia or the dust from the Santa Anas, I don’t care. All I care about is the precious little time we have.

When the constriction in my chest eases and I can finally trust my voice I ask, “How soon can you be here?”

“I’ve been drinking, so I’ll have Darius bring up the car— fifteen, twenty minutes, I guess. Is that okay?” I can hear the smile now in her voice, the same one I’ve loved from the very first time she opened her heart-shaped mouth and sang for me.

I close my eyes, and instead of the radiant city lights I see her, standing there so confidently, so sure in herself, in a red plaid jumper, two braids in her raven hair, her hands balled into determined fists by her sides. When she sang, all the other children stopped to listen. Even their stage moms and the birds in the trees and the cars on the Hollywood Freeway fell silent at the sound of Katniss Everdeen’s voice. I knew it before the rest of the world, when we were just two starry-eyed kids who happened to come from the same area of backwoods Virginia, who met here, of all places, living in adjacent apartments at Oakwood. I knew it— but anyone paying attention could see—that the girl shone more brightly than all the lights of Los Angeles put together. There’s the magic of an incandescent bulb, filaments that burn brightly for a short time at the flick of a switch, artificial witchcraft, and cheap for being that, and then there’s Katniss: lightning itself, trapped in a bottle.

“Yeah.” I think of the way her lips feel on mine, how soft and plump they are, delicious and ripe and full, and I can already feel myself growing hard in anticipation of being inside her, in the only place left that still feels like home. “That’s perfect,” I tell her.

“I’ll see you soon,” she promises, and the line goes dead, the phone beeping three times in my ear to signal that the call has ended.

I run a hand through my hair and try to strategize the best way to clear out my house before she arrives. The way this works—the _only_ way this works—is that everyone needs to be gone by the time she gets here. Maybe in the light of day, with a few less drinks in me, I’d be able to come up with something clever. But right now the phone in my hand is the only weapon I have, so I go with my old standby. Walking through the sliding glass door and back into my living room, I peer through a darkness punctuated only by the strands of Christmas lights I’ve strung across the ceiling, and I look for the tallest person in the room. I choose him because I know he’s not drunk or stoned and that, for some reason, people always listen to him.

“Finn!” I shout over the music, swatting at his shoulder with my fist to get his attention.

He whirls around, a Cheshire Cat’s grin already on his face, a mischievous sparkle in his green eyes. “Yeah, Peet, what’s up!” he yells back.

I hold my phone up and try to look contrite. “I— ah— Haymitch just called, and they moved up my call time. I gotta be there in the morning now, so I’m gonna need everybody to clear out.” When he smirks, I add, because it’s the polite thing to do, “Really sorry about that.” I shrug for added effect. “I had no idea.”

He knows my story’s bullshit and that, because we’re filming night scenes, we don’t have to report to makeup until early evening, but he plays along because, in his own way, he loves her too. “That’s too bad, bro. I always hate when my manager calls me with bad news at—” he reaches out and presses the home button on my phone to illuminate the screen, “5:13 in the morning.”

He smiles and looks over at his girl, dancing with a group of her friends across the room. Her arms sway carelessly above her head, her hips rotating in slow, steady circles to the beat, a euphoric grin plastered on her face. The way Finn looks at Annie, not only like he loves her but that he’s _awestruck_ something like her could possibly exist, sends a sharp pang of longing through me. To be so open about the person he loves—to have the courage to face whatever consequences that affection might bring—it inspires the noblest sort of envy in me.

“I got you,” he says after a moment, weaving his way through the crowd to get to the turntable. A sudden hush overtakes the room when he lifts the needle off the record. “Change of plans,” he calls out, “the party’s moving to Casa Odesta. Turns out some fucking loser has to work in the morning.”

There’s a few groans, but by and large I’m impressed by the speed with which Finnick leads the evacuation. He never lets me down— never lets _us_ down. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the couchfuckers hastily re-robing, zipping up their clothing, snapping the buttons on their jeans, and slipping into worn leather jackets. The girl wearing the purple wig straightens it on her scalp and smooths the fake strands down, pulling the bodice of her dress back up to cover her exposed breasts, and then slides on her tacky stilettos.

The room thins out faster than an evaporating wisp of smoke, the guys smacking my back as they depart, the girls pulling me down for hugs, with the occasional hand finding its way to my ass. The bottles of liquor on the kitchen counter thin out, too, as the guests leave, like I’m handing them out as party favors. It’s only fair, I reason, since they’re doing me a favor by bailing in a hurry.

I check my phone every thirty seconds in case time decides to fuck with me and surge ahead or move sideways. _Any minute. She’ll be here any minute_. My heart measures each passing second, a faulty metronome that sends blood surging throughout my body with every beat, faster all the time, heating me, dizzying me.

Finnick is the last to leave, taking a sweep through all the rooms of my house to make sure there aren’t any stragglers. “How we doing for time?” he calls out from the guest bathroom; I can hear the metallic squealing of the rings on the rod as he opens the shower curtain to check the tub for any passed out guests. “You gonna make your new call time, you think?”

I glance down at my phone, thankful that even though he knows what’s happening he isn’t going to make me say it out loud. “Yeah. I think we’re doing good for time.” I pour another finger of whiskey and ease myself onto a counterstool in the kitchen to wait for her.

“Alright, I’m off then.” He appears in the kitchen, swiping an unopened fifth of Grey Goose, and smacks me on the back. “Try to get some sleep, kid,” he adds with a wink.

“Yeah— uh— you too. Catch you tomorrow.” I give him an appreciative smile. He’s almost out the door when I call to him. “Hey, Finn?”

He turns around, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Yeah, what up?”

I’m not exactly sure what to say, but something in the air is making me feel particularly sentimental tonight, and I feel like I need to say something. At a loss for words, I settle for, “Thanks for all your help.”

He laughs and nods in understanding. “It’s no big deal, Peet. Really. And—” He taps the doorway with his hand, his wedding band knocking the wood to the rhythm of ‘Shave and a Haircut’ as he appears to consider his words, “send her my best, alright?” I hear him walk down the hallway through the foyer, opening the front door on his way out. “And tell her I miss that sweet face!” he yells over his shoulder before shutting the door behind him.

Finn isn’t gone more than a couple of minutes before she shows up, but it feels like fucking forever. As I wait for her, time moves through sludge like some ancient, now-extinct beast mired in tar. It lurches and struggles before giving up altogether, impossibly stuck in place for eternity.

When the intercom finally buzzes I check the monitor, and, seeing Darius leaning out of the driver’s side window of a nondescript black sedan, I signal the front gate to open for them. I force myself to head calmly to the front door, to open it slowly, to walk outside casually, when what I really want is to run at her, to rip the goddamn car door open, to pull her from the backseat and into my arms, to kiss the everloving shit out of her, and then to fuck her until neither of us can see straight. She makes me feel like any one of the countless throngs of fans who wait for her, breathless and sweaty and dry-mouthed, except the person I’m dying to see isn’t some symbol, it’s just the girl.

She’s in the backseat of the car, her shape barely discernible through its heavily tinted windows. But I’d know her anywhere, even by her silhouette. When the car pulls up to the front of the house, I walk down the steps and open the door for her, ostensibly to be a gentleman but really because, even though she’s my oldest and best friend, I get light-headed at the sight of her and need something to lean on.

And tonight is no exception.

She steps out of the car, one slender leg at a time, and I struggle, as ever, to reconcile my immediate response to her. It’s not like anything I’ve felt for anyone else; it’s something that is simultaneously pure and base, submissive and feral, and it belongs solely to her. I want to worship her and build churches to her, to cover her in chaste, reverent kisses. But I also want to bend her over and take her from behind, panting like an animal into the heated skin of her neck, pounding into her as we heave and sweat and bask in our own filth and fluids. I want her both ways, all ways.

As she steps out of the car, it strikes me how the photos never do her justice. Every time I see her I’m reminded of that fact. Professional studio lighting, top-end cameras, Photoshop, haute couture, a personal stylist: none of these things can capture or enhance the raw, natural beauty of the woman herself. In the dusky light of the early morning, Katniss’ hair is as black as pitch, the long, loose waves cascading around her slight shoulders, framing her face. She’s still wearing whatever clothes they put on her from last night, some couture dress with cutouts to accentuate her narrow waist and now too-prominent ribs. The fabric of her dress, the exact color of midnight, emphasizes the tone of her dark olive skin, smooth and unblemished.

I swing the car door shut and stand facing her, waiting impatiently for Darius to drive off. He’s discreet, and we trust him as much as we can trust anyone, but what we share is for no one else’s eyes. The second he’s gone I wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her to my chest. She winds her arms around my waist in turn and buries her face against me, sinking into my touch. Her breath is hot through the cotton of my t-shirt, fanning across the spot where, until a few seconds ago, my heart had been. It’s lodged in my throat now, preventing me from speaking, making it hard to breathe. My palms rest on the bare skin of her lower back, my fingertips sliding beneath the fabric of her dress to graze her flesh. A warm breeze blows around us, and she shivers— even though the night is warm and she’s in my arms.

She feels so much smaller than I remember, so much more fragile, as insubstantial as a bird. She’s resisted the pressure to have cosmetic surgery—to enlarge her breasts or straighten her nose or to otherwise mar any feature of hers that is already indescribably perfect— but she’s lost so much weight, pounds she never needed to lose in the first place, and it still doesn’t seem to be enough for them. I wonder about the last time she had a good meal; if I touch her, if I dare to _feel_ her, I’m afraid I might break her with my two bare hands.

“Hey you,” I murmur into the crown of her hair, inhaling the scent of her—floral perfume mingled with an herbal shampoo, blended with something else I’ve never been able to pinpoint, something that reminds me of the place where we grew up. Pine maybe, or earth. It’s natural and fresh, and no amount of perfume could ever entirely obliterate it.

“Hey,” she exhales into my chest, sounding as content as I feel.

I kiss the top of her head and pull away, looking her up and down appreciatively. “You look nice.” I don’t tell her that she looks better in my clothes or that she looks best wearing nothing at all, although both are true.

She ruffles my hair affectionately, her slight fingers scratching briefly at my scalp. She knows how much I love when she does that. “You don’t look so bad yourself, soldier. What’s this, a new haircut?”

Smoothing my hair back down, I try to hide that I’m as pleased as I am embarrassed she’s noticed. I shrug and grab her hand, holding onto it loosely as I swing it by my side, our intertwined fingers lightly caressing. “Just trying something new.”

“Well, I like it. You look very... hipster.” She gives me a teasing smirk, enjoying the way she makes me flush whenever she calls me out on the affectations forced on me by my stylist. She leans in and whispers conspiratorially, “You know, you could have just blamed it on the part.”

I chuckle and tug at her hand, leading her inside. “I’ll remember that for next time. So,” I look backward to soak in the sight of her again, “what’s got you all dolled up?”

She rolls her eyes, looking unamused, and before she even speaks I know why her voice is so hoarse. “Just some bullshit at the Chateau with several hundred of our closest friends.”

“Sounds cozy.” An industry event—something I don’t especially like but that Katniss outright loathes. I wish I could have been there with her, protecting, or at the very least distracting, her from the aquaria of circling sharks and piranha, leeches and snakes. Sometimes that’s the only way we can face it, on the rare occasion our circles happen to intersect: we go into it together, as one— from across the room, with dates hanging on us that we ignore while we silently make each other laugh and, after that, while we covertly eyefuck.

Katniss grimaces. “It was awful. And exhausting. Especially vapid tonight, if I don’t say so myself.” She follows me into the kitchen, sidling onto a counterstool, and grabs a bottle of red wine that had already been opened. I watch her with a small smile on my face as she pulls the cork out with her teeth and drinks straight from the bottle. “And, to make matters worse, Heavensbee’s fuckers found me on the way out.”

My smile melts instantly to a frown at the mention of Heavensbee and the pond scum working for him. “What about the restraining order?”

“What about it?” She snorts and takes a large swig of wine, and then another for good measure. She drinks so deeply from the bottle that when she comes up for air her eyes are watering. “That’s not even the worst of it though,” she says with a determined smack of her lips.

Katniss isn’t prone to hyperbole, so I know that what she has to say will be upsetting. I grab the nearest empty glass, not caring whose it is, and pour myself another drink. I throw it back in one shot to match her pace, the alcohol and anxiety scorching my insides. “Well, what happened?”

“By the time the valet brought up my car, they’d gotten in theirs and followed me—they were driving so aggressively, like it was the goddamn _Fast and the Furious_. I tried to lose them, but they kept speeding to catch up, running lights—and—when they started tailing me, the fuckers rear-ended my car.” When she sees the look of horror on my face, she adds, as if it has any chance of calming me, “Luckily I’d been braking and didn’t lose control or anything, but the bumper has officially seen better days.”

I close my eyes for a second and force myself to process what she’s just told me before I speak. “Are you okay?” My stomach ropes into painful knots from her words, and I can’t help it—maybe it’s an overreaction—but I _have_ to know she’s okay. It doesn’t matter that she was just in my arms; I circle the kitchen island and caress the back of her neck, inspecting it for whiplash like it’s something I could feel to the touch. I try to contain my rage and panic by thinking about how beautiful she is and not how much I’d like to bash in the teeth of the assholes who’d put her life in danger for the sake of a cheap photograph.

She laughs at me, or at least she tries, and grabs my hands, holding them on her lap. “I’m _fine_ , Peeta. It was nothing, really. Just a fender bender. It shook me up a little, but I’m fine. And I’ve had plenty of alcohol since to work it out of my system.” Her olive skin is flushed pink, her eyes are feverish and glassy, and I can see how drunk she is, how _not fine_ she’s feeling.

“Did you call the cops?”

“And make a scene? Draw in more paparazzi?” Her eyebrows skyrocket at the thought. “The press would have a field day. No. I’ll quietly have it fixed, and the fuckers can deal with their own damages. It wasn’t like they were going to call the cops on _me_. It was their fault, and with the restraining order against them, they knew that if the police showed they’d be royally fucked.” She attempts to smile, but, for all her talent as a singer, Katniss was never much of an actress. “They’ll have to leave me alone now,” she adds unconvincingly.

I know she doesn’t believe that any more than I do. If she did, we’d be meeting under very different circumstances. In the middle of the day, maybe. At some place like the Venice Beach Boardwalk. We’d talk, hold hands, and kiss, and neither of us would think twice about it.

But they’ll always be there. Watching, preying on us. It’s their faces that change, their names—not ours. That's the way around a restraining order: keep sending new, faceless minions to do the dirty work. And that's just the paparazzi, to say nothing of the _people_. To them we’re nothing more than zoological specimens. They label us things like _cute_ , _shameful_ , _boring_ , and _problematic_ — whatever they need to make themselves feel like they’re more than just animals too— and then they post their clandestinely taken photos across social media so that they're the first to the scoop, to make themselves feel important somehow by proving that they know where we are at any given moment, like it matters at all.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and the mutts eat us alive. No, they’ll never leave us alone.

Gazing down at her from this angle, all I can see is how frail and tired she looks. Her collarbones jut out severely below her thin flesh like shards of glass cutting her apart from the inside; her cheeks are hollowed, the cheekbones as hard as pebbles. I squeeze her hand gently and walk over to the pantry, grabbing a loaf of bread from one of the shelves to toss it onto the counter in front of her.

“When was the last time you had something to eat? I could make us some sandwiches,” I offer.

“I’m alright,” she says, but I notice the way she’s eyeing the bread like it’s the first food she’s seen in weeks.

I try a different tack. “C’mon, if we’re going to be drinking, we should at least get a solid bread base going to soak it up.”

She looks wistfully at the bread, gnawing the inside of her cheek. “I haven’t had bread in… two years?”

“Well now _that_ sounds awful,” I laugh, hoping that the sound of it will make her smile too. The knot in my stomach loosens when I see how quickly it works on her. “ _Now_ I’m feeling sorry for you, Katniss. Bullshit high-speed car chases that almost end in your death have nothing on living carb-free.”

The radiance of the smile on her face washes out everything else in the room. It’s all I can see, exquisitely blinding. “Oh, I agree. I’ll take the sudden death over a slow one any day,” she jokes, playing along with me.

She opens the cellophane bag and rips off the heel of the bread, scooping out the soft bread in the middle with her index finger and cramming it all in her mouth. She pockets the bread in one cheek like a chipmunk, which is adorable, but then she rolls her eyes back in her head at the taste and moans orgasmically, and the combination of that, the sight and sound of Katniss relishing something without reservation, goes directly to my cock. My response— the warmth in my chest and the blood rushing to my groin— sums up the contradiction in our relationship: she is everything that is pure in me and everything that is not.

“Fuck, Peeta. Did you make this?” she groans, eagerly tearing off another bite, smaller this time. She chases it with wine, the liquid glugging in the bottle as she tips it back, the muscles of her neck visibly working as she chugs the liquid down. I want to lick that neck and suck the sensitive skin into my mouth to taste her.

“Nah. I haven’t had time for that since—shit. Maybe the last time you had it? It’s been a couple of years anyway. Was that what turned you off bread, you think—my baking?” I give her a smile that I hope is as sweet as I know it is lustful and walk up to where she sits, nudging her legs apart so that I can stand between them because, suddenly, there’s nowhere else I can bear to be.

Her chewing slows, and she self-consciously holds a hand up to her mouth as if she’s only now remembered that I’m not just her best friend but the guy who’s going to fuck her until she can make out stars in the smoggy sky.

When she swallows she looks up at me through her long, dark eyelashes, and her voice is low and raspy, her neck flushed from the wine. “As if anything you do turns me off.” The words, the confidence and trust implicit in them, make my dick throb and ache for her touch. She inches her ass to the edge of the counterstool, and in response I step closer, too, until I can feel the heat at the apex of her thighs radiating through my jeans.

I bring my hands up to her bare shoulders, running my thumbs along her smooth skin, wanting to touch her everywhere, but settling for what I can reach. I lean my head down and brush my lips against the crook of her neck. She angles her head to give me better access, so I kiss her there, gently at first, and then a little harder, nipping her with my teeth. “Wanna get changed out of your rags, get into something more comfortable?” I murmur into her skin, tugging on one of the straps of her dress and smiling as she breaks out into goosebumps.

“Sure.” She pulls me toward her by the back of my thighs, searching for friction. I allow myself to grind my length against her once—one, slow, agonizing thrust—biting her earlobe and licking the shell so that she can feel the way my breath hitches when we touch like this. I force myself to step back, offering a hand to her in invitation. She accepts it silently, and we walk together, Katniss trailing half a step behind me, through my house. I kick aside upturned Solo cups as I plod along; she steps deftly over puddles of beer, dodging the landmines left by careless guests. Somehow, despite the fact that we’re both drunk and the house is a sty and I’m so filled with anticipation I can barely see straight, we make it to my bedroom without running into something that would kill us.

Flicking on the light to my room, I notice the crumpled white linens on my bed, evidence of someone else’s tryst from earlier in the night. “Well,” I grumble, really only half-annoyed, “that rules out the bed.”

Katniss wraps her arms around me from behind and peeks around my arm at the disheveled sheets, planting a kiss on the fabric of my sleeve. She tuts in mock disappointment, “Please. Since when did we need the bed?” One hand dips beneath my t-shirt, her fingers skimming over the skin of my abdomen, tracing my stomach muscles and tickling the trail of hair beneath my navel, while the other hand falls lower, stroking me over my pants, making me grow impossibly harder for her. The press of my zipper against my groin is excruciating—I’m desperate to take my pants off, desperate to feel her hands or her mouth or her pussy on me, desperate for anything she will offer to relieve the mounting pressure.

Reluctantly, I disentangle from her so that I can adjust myself, trying to make space in my pants where there is none to be had. “Here,” I offer, making my way across the room to my dresser, “let me get you something to wear.” I rummage through the drawers until I find what I’m looking for: my favorite shirt. It’s not one that I’ve ever worn in public, only around the house, on quiet nights when I’m alone with my television and my thoughts, a beer in hand, the rest of the world as good as a million miles away. It’s a soft, lived-in ringer t-shirt that I picked up ages ago at who-knows-where for what must have been pennies, an impulse buy that’s stayed with me. The fabric is pilled and, in spots threadbare, the logo on the front faded from countless washes. I hand it to her almost nervously, “You can wear this if you want.”

She stands next to me and takes it from my hands. Unfolding it, she looks at the logo emblazoned on the shirt: _Virginia is for lovers_. She takes a deep breath and runs her fingers over the cartoonish red heart replacing the letter “v,” in “lovers,” some expression I can’t name flickering across her face. It’s gone before I can ask her about it, or maybe I only imagined it to begin with. “That’ll work. Thanks,” she says in a neutral tone, dropping it on top of the dresser. I try, but fail, not to feel a pang of rejection from the way she tosses it onto the furniture, like something about the shirt burns her to the touch.

She’s inscrutable at times, and before I fall down some rabbit hole thinking about what she means by everything she does or doesn't say, I move behind her, resting my hands on her hips and brushing her hair over her shoulder with my jaw to kiss the back of her neck leisurely, slowly. I drag my tongue along the graceful column of her throat, and she responds by sighing and rubbing her ass against my erection, goading me to thrust back against her body. Just knowing that it’s her body touching mine—and no one else’s, right now—makes me want to explode. It won’t last long, the first round. After we’ve been apart this long it never does.

Pulling down the zipper on the back of her dress, I slide my hands down her shoulders to slip the thin straps down. The dress pools to her feet, and she steps out of it one foot at a time, her body swaying from the wine. When I kick it aside impatiently, more focused on sucking the skin of her shoulder than on the well-being of whatever scrap of fabric she’d been wearing, she lolls her head back against my chest and groans, “Careful or they’re gonna rip me a new one when I return it.”

I grind myself against her to show exactly how many fucks I give about the dress or how pissed Gucci or Versace or whoever the fuck loaned it to her will be when— _not_ if— we trash it. “I’m sure they can have it dry cleaned or something.” Gliding my hands up along her arms, I playfully whisper into her ear, “Besides, if they piss you off, who’s going to help them sell their shit?”

She bucks her hips backward against me and half-grumbles, half-whispers, “Hey, you said I looked nice.”

“I said _you_ looked nice, not the dress.” I open my eyes to take in her reflection in the mirror mounted above my dresser. Her eyes are still closed as she leans against me, and I make use of the chance to look at her unobserved. I can count her ribs, every one, and that worries me, but really all I can see right now is how beautiful she still is, after all this time, no matter what. She hadn’t bothered to wear a bra tonight, and I drop one of my hands down to cup her small, perfect breasts, one after the other, brushing my fingers against the dark brown skin of her tautened nipples.

“See?” I say, nudging her beneath her chin to encourage her to look, one hand still playing with one of her nipples, gently pulling and rolling the bud between my fingers. She opens her eyes and gasps, her eyes clouded with pleasure and something else. “No dress in sight, and look at you now.”

Her jaw falls open as she does what I’ve asked her to do. She looks at herself now. But not just at her—at me, at us, at how right we look together. We never get to see each other together, not like this, locked in each other’s arms. The only pictures of us that exist are from industry events and red carpets and parties where we stand half a dozen people apart, just two people in a group, acting like we don’t know every last intimate detail about each other. Acting like we aren’t the whole of each other’s world.

My hand skates down the flat plane of her abdomen, working its way beneath the band of her flimsy thong. My fingers glide through her folds, already so wet for me, so wet she’s soaked through the thin fabric of her underwear, ruining it because of me, and I dip one finger inside of her, curling it forward to stroke her walls. I add a second finger, and then, because it’s been months, I bring my fingers up to my mouth to taste her arousal.

Something about what she sees in the mirror jars her. She leans her palms down on the dresser and bends forward, her face filled with urgency. “I want you to fuck me. Hard.” She wiggles her ass against my groin and adds, her voice throaty and low, “Please.”

“Katniss, I won’t last long—it’s been so long since we—”

She cuts me off, and I barely recognize her voice, it’s so thick and clotted with want. “It doesn’t matter. This—” she thrusts back roughly against me, making my cock ache to plunge inside her, “this is what matters. _Fuck me_. Do it.”

Far be it for me to argue with that.

I unzip my jeans and lower my pants and boxers just far enough for my cock to spring loose. It slaps against my stomach, the head an angry shade of red, twitching for her, searching for warmth and friction, and I quickly reach into my back pocket to retrieve the condom from my wallet before my dick gets pissed off enough at me to explode at the mere sight of her bent over, waiting for me, her wet folds glistening in the light of the room.

Tearing the foil package open with my teeth, I sheath myself and look in the mirror. Katniss is still bent over, her fingers clutching the top of the dresser, and she’s watching me with an intense, animalistic expression. Her mercury gray eyes simmer and boil over with a need—whether it’s to remember or to forget, I don’t know. I think it might be both.

Her lips part, and she releases a small gasp when I rip her thong off her in one sharp movement. The sounds of the fabric snapping apart, our labored breaths, and the rustling palm fronds outside are the only noises that punctuate the silence.

I drag my dick once along her crease to coat it in her arousal, and then I lean forward, twining the fingers of my left hand with hers as I slowly enter her. She pushes her pelvis back impatiently to take me in deeper, faster.

“Fuck me,” she begs, and it almost sounds like a cry.

So I do, snapping my hips again and again, setting a punishing rhythm that neither of us can stand for long. I feel my balls tighten almost immediately—she’s so tight and warm, and the sounds she makes every time I plunge deep inside of her are so abandoned they sound almost inhuman. And it’s too much, so much more than I knew I could ever feel.

Her body is bony beneath me, tiny and delicate, and over the sound of our flesh slapping, I moan over and over that I don’t want to hurt her.

I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt her.

I don’t want to—

“I can take it,” she wails, her eyes squeezed firmly shut, but her mouth hangs wide open—a contradiction to me, even now.

I give her everything I have, I hold nothing back. “Katniss,” I gasp, “I want you to—I’m not going to last—”

“Just come,” she moans, rocking her hips back to meet my thrusts, her hands sliding on the lacquered furniture, unable to hold on with her sweaty palms.

The pressure is too much to stand—I feel it build until I think I might collapse beneath it. Then my world cracks open, everything shattering and exploding into a thousand pieces as my orgasm rips through me. Waves of ecstasy radiate throughout my body, and as I come I breathe in the musky scent of our sex hanging thick in the air, and I soak in the heat of her body against mine. Biting down on her shoulder, I scrape my teeth against her salty skin until she yelps my name.

We rest like this for several moments, my heaving chest pressed against her back, our left hands still threaded together, and I smooth her sweaty hair off her forehead, kissing her cheek and nuzzling it with my nose. Her eyes are closed like she has finally found a moment of peace, and I understand it, her wish to hold onto oblivion for as long as she can before the rest of the world comes rushing back in.

As I pull out of her, I kiss her back, trailing affectionate kisses along the bones of her spine. Her torso rests limp on the dresser, her legs trembling beneath her, so I scoop her up by her waist and then coax her down to the floor. She hisses as the cold hardwood touches her flushed skin, but she lies down anyway and waits for me.

“Are you okay?” I ask her as I remove the condom and tie it off, carelessly throwing it aside. I don’t look to see where it lands because I only have eyes for her.

She nods and gives a small smile, watching me as I pull my pants back up. When they’re zipped, I fall to my knees and crawl up along the length of her body, nudging her legs apart with my thigh as I hover above her on my elbows. Words can’t begin to describe how beautiful she looks freshly fucked, her jet black hair fanning out around her like a halo. She looks like a classical fresco, some ancient goddess of love and war, a hunter and a mother, wise and pure and fierce all at once.

“I’m gonna make you feel good now,” I promise, running the pad of my thumb along her lower lip.

“You already have,” she whispers.

“Well,” I grin down at her, “then I’m gonna make you feel better.” I reach over toward the dresser and grab her dress. Taking her hands one by one, I use the garment to tie them together.

She arches a brow at me and wiggles her fingers in the restraint. “This got kinky fast.”

“Yeah,” I agree, lifting her arms above her head to rest them on the floor before moving my way down her body. “It did. But I’m blaming it on _you_ this time, Little Miss Fuck Me Hard.”

As I make my way down her body to eat her out, I take a detour at her breasts, swirling my tongue around each nipple before drawing them into my mouth. Her back arches at every touch, her body straining toward me, as I nibble and tease and lick and kiss her body.

“Are you sore?” I ask her, spreading her legs wider to settle between them.

“A little,” she admitted, panting even though I’m barely touching her. She keeps her arms above her head, the muscles of her stomach spasming from the control it takes her not to move.

“Here then. Let me make it up to you.” I don’t say anything else; I just start to pleasure her. My tongue darts out to stroke gently at her entrance, a penitent seeking absolution at the gates of the church. I make love to her with my mouth so that she knows I worship her—I’m on the ground, prostrate before her, and as I taste her, as I listen to her moans of pleasure and watch her body lift up, arching and bucking and searching for me, I feel like I know what it is to touch the divine. I go easy on her, running the tip of my tongue lightly along her swollen lips, until I begin to work her clit. Then I go hard, sucking it into my mouth so forcefully my cheeks hollow from the pressure.

“Fuck yes, Peeta,” she gasps in a choked voice, her bound hands reaching down to clutch at my hair.

I pull my mouth away, making her grunt in displeasure. “Don’t even think about it,” I scold her, using one hand to remove hers from my hair.

“Fine,” she moans, resting them back above her head. “Just don’t stop. Please fuck, don’t stop.”

“As if I could.” I smile up at her, wiping my chin with one hand before using it to pin her down by her belly. She takes a deep, shuddering breath when she feels the warm wetness of our mingled fluids on her sensitive skin.

“God, I want you,” she whispers, her voice so wrecked it sounds as broken and sibilant as the hissing static on a record.

“You have me.” I try not to let her see the promise in the words, of just how far I’d take it. My head falls back down to the juncture of her thighs, and I lick and flick and nibble and nip at her until she comes completely undone for me. I try to memorize the sounds she makes, every last spasm and twitch, the way she looks, flushed and sweaty and writhing for me.

I pay attention to every last detail because I don’t know when—or if—we’ll get to do this again. The reality of that hits me like a sucker punch, and I press my face into the soft skin of her thigh and kiss her there so that I don’t have to meet her eyes as she comes down from her high.

“I need a smoke,” I confess, my face still pressed to her leg. But I know I need more than that. Something other than that. The smoke is just a start.

“Okay,” she whispers, her hands falling to my hair, carding through it and scratching my scalp. I let her touch me now, closing my eyes to memorize the feel of it, too.

After a moment I sit up and unbind her hands, pulling her up with me. Although she’s the one without a stitch of clothing on, I feel like I’m the one who’s naked. “Get dressed? And then meet me outside, yeah?”

She nods, using the borrowed dress to wipe off my chin—the best use for haute couture I can possibly think of. “Sure. I’ll be out in a minute.” The way she looks up at me with those shining gray eyes makes me want to ask her, makes me want to hear it.

So I leave the room before I say something I’ll regret.

When I step out onto the deck I notice that, to the east, the horizon is glowing a deep shade of umber. Dawn won’t be far off now, although it still feels like it’s the dead of the night, solitary and hushed. I sink heavily onto the sofa positioned against the stucco wall of my house, resting my head against the wall as I look through the leaves at the lights of the valley. I pull out the pack of cigarettes from my pocket and retrieve the joint I’ve stashed there, needing something other than nicotine to dull the ache that’s taken root in my chest. Lighting it, I take a deep drag, watching the tendrils of smoke rising from the butt of the joint as they get carried away by the gusts sweeping over the hills, and I wait for her.

I always wait for her.

She doesn’t keep me long this time. Lost in thought, I don’t notice her until she’s standing next to me, barefoot and wearing only the t-shirt I gave her, holding out her hand for the joint. The shirt doesn’t quite reach the middle of her thighs, and at just the sight of her, at how soft and bare she looks standing next to me, I already want her again. Although, in truth, I have never stopped.

“Peeta Mellark,” she says, sinking down next to me and curling her legs up beneath her, “you’re a lifesaver.” I wrap an arm around her shoulder, and she snuggles into me, taking a hit and holding the smoke in her lungs as long as she can before exhaling.

“Yeah, that’s me alright,” I grin, watching her take a second, deeper hit. “Don’t call that dog ‘Lifesaver,’” I prompt.

She exhales with a hacking cough as she laughs, “Call him shithead.”

We laugh together, already feeling the effects of the pot, and she hands over the joint for me to take another hit. “I love that movie,” I tell her, as if she didn’t already know. Her head falls against my shoulder, and we rest like this for an epoch measured not in years but in the time it takes for the joint we’re sharing to burn down to the butt. Back and forth, we pass it to each other, getting hopelessly stoned in each other’s arms. She places her hand on my chest, and even through my shirt I can feel every point of contact from the pressure of her fingers and palm. Her touch sends an electric current racing through my veins, jolting my pulse. My heart gallops for her, it leaps over hurdles, it wins the Triple Crown.

My heart beats so loudly for her I think that the whole of Los Angeles could hear it if they only paid attention.

I’ve forgotten that words exist, that the world isn’t made solely out of colors and shapes and raw, basic emotion, when she breaks the silence. She stares pensively at the city below us, her eyes unfocused and indistinct. “I hate this place,” she murmurs. “It corrupts everyone... and everything.”

Holding her, I can feel how tiny and broken she is, a reconstituted girl made out of a thousand infinitesimal fragments, held together with guts and glue. And I’m no better. And together, what we have, it’s as broken—

“I want to go home, Peeta.”

This is the wish of a tired child, and I know it all too well because I feel it, too, every night that I lie in bed and stare restlessly out the open windows, missing the sounds of the cicadas and the way the stars look in the night sky, those fathomless points of light so slow-moving in the firmament they might as well be fixed in place. But I know that even if she looked for it, she would never find that place she calls home. We are both too altered to find our way back; our home has been incinerated, reduced to rubble and ash, populated with ghosts and skeletons. Or maybe that’s what’s been done to us. But either way, I know.

There is no home.

But I love her, so I lie to her, the same way you do to someone who is dying in your arms. “You will. I promise.” I kiss the top of her head, my lips lingering in her hair, and I rub small circles in her shoulder, my thumb methodically moving and moving, unable to stop, desperate to reach her through the fabric of her shirt.

“I want to go home now.” Her hand falls to my waist, her arm clinging so tightly to me it feels like she might split me into pieces.

“Tell you what,” I murmur, my voice low like the rumbling surf as it barrels toward the shore, “you fall asleep and dream of home. And you’ll be there for real before you know it. Okay?”

She lifts her head to look at me, her eyes wide and filled with something like hope, and swiftly, before I realize what she is doing, she climbs onto my lap and straddles me, cupping my face with both her hands. Finally, it’s really her—all of her, nothing but her—and she kisses me, capturing my lips with hers. “Thank you,” she whispers. And then again, and again, “Thank you.”

I don't know what she's thanking me for, but I accept her gratitude because her lips are soft and sweet, just like I remember, but sweeter. We kiss as slow as a growing apple tree, as deep as a yawning cave—we kiss lazily, languidly, like we have all the time in the world and there is nothing else in it but the two of us. It feels like we kiss for hours, or days, stroking each other’s tongues, remembering every precious inch of each other’s mouths. We pause to stare into each other’s eyes, to commit each other’s faces to memory, and then we kiss again, deeper, because it hurts not to.

I feel her hands grasping at the roots of my hair, pulling me closer to her, and it feels so indescribably good that my hands fall from her neck down to her breasts, brushing her nipples through the fabric, and then to her waist, holding her down against my hard length as I thrust it upward, wanting to be inside her.

“It’ll be okay,” I whisper when we break for air, panting and filled with hunger, “we have each other.”

She makes a small strangled sound at my words and reaches down, unzipping my jeans and reaching into my boxers. Slowly, she lowers herself down onto me.

My head falls back as my cock pushes into her. She stretches to take all of me, every inch, and she’s so warm and wet—I never knew how it would feel, her heat and the wetness enveloping me—that it aches to be this close to her. “Katniss,” I choke out, barely able to think straight, much less speak, “a condom.”

“It’s okay,” she whimpers, already rocking up and down, taking me in as deeply as she can before lifting herself up again. “It’s only with you.”

I thrust upward at her words, because it’s only with her, too. There’s never been anyone else that I’ve made love to without a barrier between us. There’s never been anyone else I’ve made love to at all. Not like this. Never like this.

“...Only ever…,” she pants, and I thrust again, kissing her, loving the taste of her words as they tumble out of her mouth. She grinds her pubic bone against me, still trying to tell me, but the words are so hard for her to find, “...Only ever... with you…”

We’re fucked up, irrevocably fucked up. It’s not just the drugs that have turned our blood to sludge and our nerve endings to live wires or the alcohol that has set our guts alight. It’s this place—this place that has maimed us, hacked us apart piece by piece and limb by limb until we’re nothing but bastards and bitches, mutts in the wilderness without a pack or home, coupling under a glowing sky because it’s the most natural, essential thing there is. Because it’s all there is, all that’s left.

I make love to her in this place that destroys lovers. I make love to her for all the other times we won’t be able to. I make love to her for lost time and missed chances and long odds and because it’s all I can give her—my worthless, damaged heart.

And when she looks at me, as she slowly rides me, bliss washing over the features of her face, I watch the reflection of the sunrise in her eyes, the way the soft russet orange mixes with burning crimson. It’s my new favorite color—the sunrise in Katniss’ eyes.

She leans forward and kisses me with a gasp, crying into my mouth as she comes around me, her walls fluttering and squeezing at my cock, pushing me over the threshold. I press my forehead to hers, listening to her moan as my warm cum fills her.

“Oh god,” she cries, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and burying her face in my neck. She exhales in small pants, her breath hot on my already sweaty skin. I dip my head to nuzzle her neck, both of us taking a moment to inhale the scent of each other’s musk.

“We’re gonna make a mess,” I whisper in her ear, smoothing her hair back and holding her close, not caring what we ruin as long as it’s not us. “Here, lean forward.” I nudge her back on her haunches enough to remove my flannel shirt, handing it to her and then lifting her off of me. I force myself not to squirm when she wipes down my oversensitive skin with it, but she works quickly and then cleans herself off before unceremoniously chucking the shirt to the ground. “Well, it had a good run,” I offer lightly, gesturing to the flannel. Some crass part of me wants to frame that shirt for posterity or to run it up a flagpole, a tangible memento, a symbol of glory, from the best sex I’ve ever had. I tuck myself back into my pants and zip up, feeling beyond spent, equal parts exhausted and elated.

At the thought of that—a tangible memento—I dip my hands beneath her shirt and grasp her narrow hips, my thumbs stroking the skin of her stomach. “Katniss, is there any chance that I could get you—?”

She shakes her head, climbing over me so that she’s curled up in the fetal position with her head on my lap, looking out toward the valley. “No. I’m on the pill.” Her voice is as distant and far off as the lights glittering down below. It’s like she’s already gone, and I don’t understand why she left.

“Hey.” I shake her shoulder gently, calling her back to me because I’m not ready yet to let her go. “Stay with me.”

At my words she rolls onto her back and folds her hands together over her ribcage. Reluctantly, she turns her head, her eyes meeting mine. I tuck her hair behind her ears and trace the contour of her jaw, trying to parse out how I feel about her being on the pill—not why she is on it or why she never told me or why we’d never done _this_ before, but that, for one deliriously foolish moment, I’d found myself hoping she wasn’t. “So there won’t be any little Mellarks crawling around in the near future,” I try to say jokingly, but it doesn’t feel very funny to me. It feels more like a tragedy, and I’m thankful when she doesn’t smile either.

Turning her head away, Katniss looks out toward the city lights, thoughtlessly brushing the lettering on her shirt with her thumb. Over and over, her thumb strokes the red heart as if encouraging it to beat for her. After a while of resting in silence together, she speaks, her voice so faint I have to strain to hear it. “I had a dream about us the other night, you know. I’d forgotten about it until earlier, until—” I intently watch the way her hand touches the shirt, wondering why the action inspires something like grief inside me. “...It felt so real.”

I swallow thickly, not sure what to say to keep her talking. She rarely opens up like this, and I’m afraid that, with one wrong word from me, she’ll go running like a wild animal. So I comb my fingers through her hair, slowly and deliberately, and force myself to sound only mildly interested. “Oh yeah… what was the dream?”

Her gray eyes lock on me, the look in them almost reproachful. “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to laugh.”

“C’mon, it’s me. I won’t laugh at you. Promise.” I smile down at her and try to tickle her armpit, hoping that if I can make her laugh and smile back she’ll feel more willing to trust me with her dreams. Because of course I’d never laugh at her, and certainly not for dreaming about us.

She swats my hand away to make me stop. “I’m being serious, Peeta. I’ll know if you even _think_ it’s stupid. I’ll see it in your eyes, and I won’t be able to stand it, okay?”

I place a hand over hers so that she knows I’m sincere. “I swear I’m not going to think it’s stupid,” I assure her. “But here. I’ll close my eyes so you don’t see anything at all in them.” I lean my head back against the wall and ask pointedly, “Does that make it any better?” I wait to hear her voice while listening to the morning birds trilling their songs, the gentle tinkling of wind chimes carrying through the air from some neighbor’s house, and the street traffic humming down below. The traffic ebbs and flows from a nearby stoplight several times before she finally sighs and begins to speak.

“We were home,” she says. “Not here, but _home_. I—I don’t think we’d ever left. It was our whole lives, Peeta. All of it. _Everything_.”

My heart hammers in my chest, wanting to hear every last detail, every single piece of _everything_ , but not knowing if it will be able to stand it when I open my eyes to all this instead.

“It started out in a field, when we were kids. We met playing tag, and you tried running away, but when I touched you and yelled, ‘Tag, you’re it,’ you just smiled at me like of course you’d known all along I’d catch you. We were inseparable… You—you’d walk me home every day after school and then, one day, you kissed me goodbye on my front porch. And then you kissed me goodbye every day after that, too. And—you took me to prom—except _I_ asked _you_ —because you said you didn’t want to take it for granted that you’d be the one I wanted to go with. I wore a dress I’d bought at the Goodwill, and when you picked me up you told me I’d never looked more beautiful, and you gave me flowers, this bouquet of wildflowers you’d picked yourself.” The words spill out of her now, pouring directly into me, soaking my soul, drowning me. “We were each other’s first kisses and first times, and it was just the two of us until we—” she breaks off, her voice unnaturally tight in her throat. I want to look at her, to know what I would find in her eyes if she looked back at me, but I’m too afraid to show her what I’m feeling at this moment.

She takes a shuddering breath and continues. “Anyway, we were together. And you—you ran a bakery on Three Notched Road.” I can’t help but make a soft, pleased sound as I think about it, what that bakery would look like, how I’d kiss Katniss on the cheek in the morning while she was sleeping before ducking out the front door for the day, or how I’d bring bread home for her in the evening for us to share over dinner.

“And I hunted for food in the woods with a bow and arrow,” she tells me, sounding lost somewhere. “You’d tell me I was a crack shot every time. And—it was us, like that. Together. Then one day we were in the field at Mint Springs Valley, and my head was resting in your lap, like this. Except we—” Her voice breaks, and when I hear the choking sound she makes, I squeeze her hand tightly to encourage her to continue. “I can’t,” she protests, even though I haven’t said it yet.

But she has to. I’m desperate to hear more, desperate to know, because this has been my dream too. “Yes,” I tell her, not trusting my voice above a whisper. “You can. And we what?”

When she doesn’t speak again, I open my eyes and look down at her to make sure she’s really still with me, that I haven’t lost her somewhere along the way. She’s looking determinedly up at the sky, her eyes glassy from tears she’s fighting to hold back. I know her well enough to see that this is the moment that costs her everything; with all the money she has, this is the one thing she can’t afford. “We were watching them play,” she tells me.

“Who?” I ask, already knowing. Because I’ve seen them before too.

“Our children.”

When she mentions them, I close my eyes and let my head fall back against the wall. Swallowing the sob in my throat, I force myself to breathe slowly. “Tell me about them,” some man says, but I don’t recognize his low, gruff voice. The last thing I remember, I was an adolescent boy chastely kissing Katniss Everdeen goodbye on her front porch. The man who speaks now can’t be me, even though he wants exactly the same thing that I do: to hear Katniss talk about them, the children she might have had in another life with this boy she’s always loved.

I want—I need—to hear her talk about our children.

“There was a girl with my hair and skin but your eyes, and she was beautiful and fierce. She was bright and clever, just like you—but feisty and impulsive. And there was a boy—he was so much like you in every way, sweet and friendly and gentle, except he had my eyes and loved to sing. They were running—the grass was so tall it came up to her waist and his shoulders—but they were cutting a path through the field, the grass pulling at their legs, and the boy was trying as hard as he could to catch up to her.”

I could implode under the weight of her words. I’ve seen them too—I can see them even now, here with my eyes closed, as she talks about them—they run together toward the setting sun, the dusky peaks of the Appalachians standing guard over them. Their peals of laughter carry across the open field to where I sit, Katniss curled up with her head in my lap, her hands busy braiding a chain of flowers. “The boy’s always trying to keep up with the girl, huh,” I say wistfully, running my fingers through hair the same color as our daughter’s, trying not to cry for the loss of her. “Figures.” It’s only because my eyes are still closed that I find the strength to ask her the question gnawing me alive. “What were their names?”

Opening my eyes, I see that she’s crying. Tears fall from the corners of her eye, streaking down the sides of her face and onto my pants. “That’s the thing. I can’t remember.” Her voice drops an octave, so low it’s almost inaudible. “I guess it doesn’t matter.”

When I wipe her tears away with my knuckle, she turns to look at me. There’s nothing joyful about this moment, this acknowledgment of everything we’ll never have, but she smiles at me just the same. She smiles in the same way you would if someone unexpectedly ripped your heart out—in shock and agony and a little bit of awe. “It was just us, Peeta. Totally alone. And we were—safe. And happy. And free.”

I swallow the bitter pill she’s handed me. Because we will never be alone. Or safe. Or happy. And certainly never free. I say the only thing I can, closing my eyes so that I don’t cry as another part of me dies. “Sounds like a great dream.”

“It really was.” She takes my hand and brings it up to her lips, kissing my knuckles, dragging them along her lower lip. “I would have liked to live in it forever.” And then, too soon, I lose her.

She stands up, smoothing out her shirt and clearing her throat. “But it wasn’t real.”

I want to tell her that it could be someday, if we left, if we ran away now. If we didn’t live here. If we escaped the trap that keeps us here, preventing any of it.

She waits a moment, looking down at me as if to see whether I’ll argue with her, but when I don’t say anything she leans down and briefly kisses me. “I’m going to change.” As she walks away, she calls over her shoulder, “Can you text Darius and have him come pick me up?”

Rising, I walk to the railing and lean over it, looking down at the houses farther down the hill. Lights illuminate several of them now as their inhabitants wake up for the day, numbly, blindly going about the rat race, doing whatever they need to do, selling whatever they need to sell, saying whatever they need to say, to survive. After I send the text to Darius, I light a cigarette and, while I’m smoking it, I think about falling in love and then living a simple but true life, without lies and subterfuge and masks. Without fame or money or being owned by anyone else. Just the two of us, safe and happy and _home_.

When I meet her in the kitchen several minutes later, she’s brushed her hair and put on a pair of my sweatpants. They hang so low on her narrow hips I’d be able to see her pubic bone if she weren’t still wearing my “Virginia is for Lovers” t-shirt.

“Mind if I borrow this?” She looks almost sheepish to ask.

I think of the places she’ll take that shirt, how she’ll wear it across five continents while she’s on tour, taking that little piece of me with her, and I smile. “Keep it. It looks better on you.”

“Thanks,” she grins, looking pleased, one hand tugging the bottom hem of the shirt.

We wait in the kitchen and make small talk, snacking on bread to sober up, our time as lovers already over again. When Darius arrives and buzzes at the gate, Katniss and I walk to the front door together.

She stands with her hand on the doorknob, ready to go, but I feel panic welling up in me at the thought of her walking out the door, leaving me behind without her. She has to know that wherever she goes, I should be at her side.

I make my pitch for it, not just for today, but for every day. “I’ll walk you home,” I offer. “Please let me. I’ll even kiss you on your front porch before I go.”

She gives a wry smile, not understanding me. “Peeta, I live five miles away.”

“We’d make it,” I promise her. I step closer, cupping her face with one of my hands while winding an arm around her waist. “We’d make it,” I tell her again, more fervently this time so that she might actually believe it.

Her lower lip trembles as she looks up at me. She places both her hands on my chest, touching me but keeping me at a distance. “We wouldn't make it five _minutes_.”

She’s right, of course, about what would happen. The wolves would come for us to rip us apart. They’d gnash and tear us to shreds—they’d pick our bones clean—and, when they were done with us, they’d do the unthinkable and go after the girl and boy. They’d rip them apart, too.

No. Where we live we keep the things we love the most secret to protect them. We keep them somewhere they can’t get hurt. And sometimes that means holding them for a short time before letting them go, hoping they eventually come back.

I lean down and capture her lips with mine, and I kiss her like there’s no tomorrow. For us, there might not be. Maybe she’ll stay with Gale Hawthorne or meet someone better on the road, someone who can convince her that marriage and babies and the white picket fence are possible. Or maybe she will decide we’ve run our course, or that what we do is too risky, too much for her. Or maybe she’ll just stop loving me.

Seven months is such a long time to live apart.

“Let’s try to meet up in London,” she says when we our lips finally part.

“Okay,” I tell her, still tasting her on my tongue. But we both know it’s unlikely we will.

She moves to open the door but pauses, reconsidering something. My heart leaps into my throat, thinking that maybe, after all, she’ll stay with me. She wraps her arms around my neck instead and pulls me down into a hug. I draw her in as tightly as I can, burying my face in her hair. “Don’t do anything foolish,” she whispers, “like getting married, okay?”

I nod ruefully. There’s just one woman in this world I would marry, but I can’t risk losing her by doing that. “I’ll see you soon,” I lie.

Pulling away, she opens the door and steps through it, walking toward the sedan parked in front of the stoop. She turns her head to look back at me to say something, but the Santa Anas steal her words. I read her lips instead as she mouths, “See you soon.”

She climbs into the backseat, shutting the door behind her, and the car pulls away, disappearing from sight as it turns out of my driveway. As soon as she’s gone, I step back out onto the deck for another smoke, needing something, anything, to quell the anxiety overwhelming me. I watch the taillights of the cars below me as they wind along Laurel Canyon, a constant stream of people leaving. They could all leave, all of them, driving off and vanishing into the sunset. The only one that matters is her.

I look at the cars and try to find her, try to guess which one might be taking her away from me. Car after car goes by, and I know she must be long gone by now, but I can’t help looking for her.

When my phone buzzes in my back pocket, I catch myself hoping it’s her. Please let it be her, telling me she’s coming back. That she’ll stay a little longer. For another day, another hour, or just for one more kiss.

But more than this, as I reach for my phone I find myself hoping it’s her, telling me she’s remembered their names.


	6. Basic Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course he’d be back now for the holidays. Exodus, I guess they call it. In basic training, they let even the lowest grunts go home for Christmas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By papofglencoe. Modern AU Everlark. Rated E for explicit language, graphic sex, and passing references to drug and alcohol use. 
> 
> A Christmas one shot. 
> 
> Contains direct and revised quotes from The Hunger Games books and films, none of which I own, and song lyrics by Norah Jones. 
> 
> With many thanks to @jennagill and @eala-musings for betaing and to @dandelion-sunset and @everlylark for pre-reading. I love you guys so much. For @kellywithayy. Happy birthday, chica. Thank you for being an amazing friend. 
> 
> If you’ve enjoyed this story, please drop me a line. I’ll consider it an early Christmas present. ;) And happy holidays, wherever this finds you, especially to all members of the Armed Forces and their families. <3c

It’s his mother I see first, in the reflection of my water-spotted spoon, as I hold it up to inspect it for dirt. The curve of the metal shows her how she really is, how _I_ see her, emphasizing her deformities—a cold and shallow woman, who’d always thought, with that over-sized head of hers, that I was never good enough for him, not even as his friend.

What kind of monster thinks that about a kid?

Our booth is in the back corner of the diner—where they seat all the ugly people—and because my back is to the rest of the restaurant, I don’t immediately notice them when they come in and are seated half a dozen tables behind us. By the time I see the bitch, she’s sipping tea out of a chipped porcelain mug, one of her haughty eyebrows raised and her puckered, prematurely wrinkled lips pursed in disapproval as she listens to a man with a buzz cut say something to her.

Subtly, so Prim doesn’t notice me looking, notice _her_ , and then open her big mouth, I rotate the spoon to see who else is with her. Her husband sits next to her and looks none too happy about it, keeping enough distance between them for the Holy Ghost and an entire host of angels. No love lost between those two. And next to him, wedged into the corner, one of his broad shoulders pressed to the wall from lack of space, is their oldest. Across from them, with their backs to mine, is Rye, with his trademark douchebag man bun I’d recognize from outer space, and next to him, on the aisle side of the bench, is the man with the buzz cut.

It doesn’t occur to me right away that it’s Peeta— _my_ Peeta (except he isn’t mine at all)—because Peeta has wavy blond hair that curls at the very ends, feathery wisps that hang over his collar and ears, begging to be clutched and grasped and twirled by curious fingers. (Not that I’d ever had the courage to do any of those things.) He’s had hair like that his entire life—at least for as long as I’ve known him, which amounts to pretty much the same thing—the sign of a boy who has always been careless about his good looks.

His hands give him away, gesturing as he talks. They’re recognizable even in the convex surface of my spoon, and I swallow with effort, dropping it into my coffee. Emptying a plastic cup of creamer into my mug, I swirl, swirl, swirl, trying to erase the memory of the way his hands looked holding mine. I stare down at the cream dispersing, transforming something straightforward and pure into a muddied, adulterated mess.

Of course he’d be back now for the holidays. Exodus, I guess they call it. In basic training, they let even the lowest grunts go home for Christmas.

I may have checked a few months ago, before the semester started, when I’d still nursed the faintest of hopes that I could somehow make things right between us. That maybe it was all a nightmare, or a rumor, or that, even if what our friends said was true—that he’d enlisted as soon as he got back from backpacking through Europe—I could still convince him to come back home, to me.

Taking a sip of my coffee—I’d started drinking it when I moved to East Lansing, partially as a way to sober up after drinking, but mostly to look older than I am (the last thing I need is to get charged as a minor in possession)—I try not to grimace from the bitter taste of it or the even bitterer taste that comes with the realization he must have seen my parents as he walked to his table but chose not to acknowledge them. That doesn’t seem right, or like the Peeta I know—they were more like parents to him than his own blood—but then again my parents hadn’t said anything to him either, out of loyalty to me, maybe, knowing the basic facts of what I’d told them.

Which is: Peeta and I aren’t speaking. And we haven’t in months. And there's no reason to believe we ever will again. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

I wonder how long he’s been home and if any of our friends have seen him and decided not to say anything to me about it. I don’t know what to hope—that seeing him, even like this, is an exclusive privilege I have, which would mean he’s been alone since he got back, trapped in his house with his horrid mother, or if the other people who love him have had this privilege too, despite hiding it from me. Rue. Thresh. Finnick. Annie. Johanna. Delly. I go through the list of all the people I hope will make the time to see him while he’s home from Fort Benning. He deserves a red carpet, whether or not I’m included.

“Honey,” my dad says. His flint-gray eyes, the same color as mine, shoot me a look of sympathy that tells me not only has he spotted the Mellarks, but he knows I have too. “Are you going to finish your dessert?”

“Nah,” I manage to say through whatever is lodged in my throat, wrinkling my nose at the thought of eating. My stomach feels like an anchor dropped to the bottom of a lake—a leaden, unmovable weight surrounded by chilly darkness. “I’m gonna take it to go.”

Prim shoots a covetous glance over at the slice of apple pie on my plate. It’s completely untouched—but that doesn’t mean _she_ can have it.

“Don’t get any funny ideas, Little Duck,” I grumble, nudging the plate away from her. Rules are rules, and although I’ve been known to break one or two in my time, there’s a perfectly good grilled cheese sandwich sitting right in front of her.

And, besides, the pie belongs to someone else.

“Oooookayyyyyy fiiiiiiine,” she moans, rolling her eyes and petulantly kicking her legs under the table. She takes an exaggeratedly dutiful bite out of her sandwich, smacking her lips as she chews to signal her distaste for it, like the little shit didn’t hand-pick the goddamn thing herself off a twenty-page menu.

_Was I this big of a pain in the ass at her age too?_

There’s something about Christmas that transforms even the sweetest of angels into Rosemary’s baby, every child filled with the smug assurance that being naughty or nice has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Santa is going to drop a shit-ton of presents under the tree for them.

I suppose I should be more charitable—it’s not just Christmas amping her up, but me being back home from school too—but after a week with Prim, babysitting her while both of our parents work, the kid constantly snooping around the house for “Santa’s” secret cache of toys, I want to pull out every last hair on my head. Don’t get me wrong, she’s the love of my life—or one of them anyway. There’s no question about it. I would _die_ for her, _kill_ for her, if the real world demanded gestures of love like that. But that doesn’t mean, after a week of wrangling an overstimulated baby sister, I don’t want to pull out every last damn hair on her head too.

“If I have four more bites can I get dessert?” she asks around a mouthful of food, holding up four fingers as reinforcement of her noble idea, but the three of us pointedly dodge her attempts to negotiate what she knows to be an ironclad rule.

My mom cleaves a piece of her blueberry pie off with her fork and holds it out to my dad, who leans forward and closes his mouth around it, taking the bite of pie with him as he sits back against the booth, his eyes fluttering shut to savor the taste. They sit shoulder to shoulder, much closer than the space calls for, and I can tell one of my mom’s hands rests comfortably on my dad’s thigh.

After nineteen years of marriage, they are still ridiculously, impossibly in love. So much so they are almost childlike about it. It didn’t matter that they had a shotgun wedding—when I see them, the little moments like this, I know they would have gotten married anyway, whether or not the gumball-sized lump in my mom’s uterus that eventually turned out to be me had anything to do with it. Childhood sweethearts, they’ve loved each other since the cradle, and they’ll go on loving each other to the grave.

Something about that knowledge makes my stomach clench painfully—or maybe it’s the chicken fried steak I ate—and I find myself wondering if Peeta saw me, if he even noticed that it was me sitting here, and what he thought when he saw me... if he had… after all this time apart.

Before now we’d never gone for more than a week without seeing each other, and that was only when his family would go on their annual vacation, usually to some flashy resort in the Caribbean that his mother insisted they go to for the sake of maintaining the illusion they were one, big happy fucking family. I shoot a grateful look at my parents, thankful they always invited him on ours, vacations spent adventuring together as we roamed Up North, camping in the wilderness and on the shores of lakes whose names we never bothered to learn. Countless nights spent lying next to Peeta on a blanket beneath the stars, encircled by the stands of looming pines, pointing out the Perseids… I’ve fallen asleep to those memories more times than I can count in the late hours, when I’m wracked with homesickness for him.

_June_. I haven’t seen him since fucking _June_.

Beneath the table I count the months out on my fingers for something like the millionth time, as if I’ve forgotten how many it’s been.

_Six_.

I know how many days it’s been too, but I don’t have enough fingers for that.

_One hundred and ninety-three_.

Such a long time to feel homeless.

“So, honey,” my mom says, chewing her pie and tapping the tines of her fork lightly on her plate, breaking up a small crumb into several smaller ones. “What are your plans tonight with your friends?”

The way she asks makes it sound like I’m five again and she wants to know if I’m going over to Johanna’s for a nice slumber party, to curl up in our pajamas and watch our favorite cartoons while we braid each other’s hair, instead of what I now desperately hope will happen, which is that I will get so shitfaced I might let one of Finnick’s random friends feel me up on the couch.

Anything to forget my former best friend, the guy sitting six tables behind me, who is acting like a total stranger. _That’s_ my plan for tonight.

“Um, I’m heading over to Jo’s… we’re gonna watch Netflix, maybe binge on Narcos,” I say, knowing full well that the only narcotics involved will be whatever pharmaceuticals our friend Madge manages to pilfer from her junkie mother’s medicine cabinet. _Easier to give half-truths and let others supply the lies_.

“That sounds like fun,” she replies, sounding as tranquilized as I’d like to be, a slight pink flush covering the fair skin of her face. “Are you—uh—planning to stay the night there too?”

I know with certainty why she is asking, and my already queasy stomach turns at the thought of my parents having Merry Early Christmas sex. My mom is about as subtle as a pickaxe to the temple, which happens to sound absolutely wonderful right about now.

“Yeah, that's probably a good idea,” I say, trying to make it sound like it’s her idea and not something I intended all along. “In case the roads get bad.” I add, for effect. Out of habit I try to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, except now it’s too short. My roommate Cressida talked me into getting a pixie cut, a compromise between what she really wanted to do, which was shave half my head like she’d done to hers. As I realize how different I must look, it occurs to me that maybe Peeta hadn’t seen me after all...

But no sooner do I think this that I shut the idea down. Even if he hadn’t recognized me right away, he would have recognized the rest of my family, and, like I did for him, he would have put two and two together.

And of course he hadn’t tried calling or texting or stopping by or—or— _anything_.

There really is no difference, then, between not seeing me and not wanting to see me. The goal is the same, and so is the effect.

Our waitress approaches the table, an elderly woman with wiry gray hair, a quiet, birdlike creature with jurassic skin, and before she can speak I ask her as politely as I can for a takeout box. The sooner I can get out of here—and away from him—the better.

The distance between us is impossible, but the proximity is so much worse.

While we wait for her to return, my parents try to distract me with idle chit chat about my courses this past semester and the ones I’ve registered to take in spring, what my new college friends are like, whether I’ve gone out on dates with anyone “nice”—the usual bullshit, most of which we’ve already discussed ad nauseum over the past fifteen weeks. I deflect their questions the best I can with one-word answers, in no mood to launch into a discussion here about any of it, when the only thing I can think about—and they damn well know it—is him.

When the waitress drops off the box for me, I carefully place the slice inside and shoot a look at Prim, who is slowly gagging down the rest of her sandwich—the cheese, or whatever cheese product they used on it, is cold and coagulated and looks about as edible as a condom.

They could be here a while yet.

“Mind if I take off?” I ask, already sliding on my winter coat.

“Sure,” my parents answer in unison, eager to offload half their offspring as quickly as possible, and I have to force myself to think about Chris Evans shirtless, wrestling Sebastian Stan in a pit of mud, to dispel the image of _why_ they want me gone.

I finger the keyring in my pocket and nod, exhaling roughly as I mentally prepare to make my escape out the door, hopefully undetected, past an entire table of Mellarks.

“Thanks for dinner,” I tell my parents, leaning over and kissing the side of Prim’s head. My lips feel shaky and weird, and it’s hard for me to curl my fist around my car keys. My entire body is absorbed in the task of trying to gather air from what seems like an oxygenless room.

“Drive safely, sweetheart,” my dad cautions, like hearing the words will inspire me to do anything other than peel out of the parking lot at 60 mph.

“Sure.” I nod.

And then I do it.

I make myself stand and turn around and walk toward the door.

It’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life, fighting between the two warring parts of myself that want, at the same time, to be seen and to be invisible, to throw my arms around him and to run as far away as I can get from him, to drink in the wholeness of him and to throw a glass of ice water in his fucking face.

The closer I get to his table, the more I can see how boot camp has changed his physique. Peeta had always been strong—with broad, muscular shoulders—but it had always been in a boyish sort of way, with room to fill out and soft edges to his still-undefined muscles. Watching him wrestle, the way he filled out his singlet, had been one of my few joys in high school, although he’d never known it. ( _Should have told him, should have told him…should have..._ )

But seeing how he’s changed, I don’t know if it would be a joy to stare at his body now or if it would only make me cry for what has been lost. The boy is gone—in his place, some man, some mutt version of the Peeta I used to know, is what’s left. He looks like he could kill me with his bare hands, and I suppose that’s what they’re training him to do—to be able to go into combat, and win. That’s the career he chose, and seeing him and the way it’s already changed him, my heart aches at the thought of why he may have done that instead of coming to State with me like we’d planned.

He’d never thought he was good enough the way he was, and I’d contributed to that, in the end. A nagging voice in my head tells me that’s why he left—to make himself something better than he was, not knowing that was impossible because he was already the best of us.

As Peeta gestures with his hands, relaying a story that has the men at his table laughing and even his bitch of a mother smirking, I can see the muscles of his back flexing through the fabric of his t-shirt. His arms are sculpted from his delts to his forearms, every muscle perfectly toned and developed, and the sleeves of his shirt look like they’re losing the war against his biceps. I keep my focus straight ahead, but I can’t help noticing out of the corner of my eye the appreciative looks he gets from the female diners around him, some of whom are old enough to be his mother.

I know what they see. I’m not stupid. A young man, strong and confident, a guy who has his Shit Together™ while their sons and boyfriends and husbands and soon-to-be-exes squander their lives playing video games, pounding beers, and bitching about having to shovel the sidewalk.

Hard edges and sharp planes—that’s what _I_ see—when all I ever wanted was _my_ Peeta, who was perfect the way he was.

I grip the takeout box tighter, like the cardboard can provide me with courage or moral support or any fucking thing at all other than a fool’s hope, and I make my legs carry me past their table. Peeta’s voice drops out mid-sentence—even that seems to have changed, the tone is deeper than I remember, the cadence more assured—and that’s how I know he’s seen me.

My pace quickens, but I’m still within earshot when I hear his mother squawk, loudly enough for me to hear, “ _That’s_ her? What the hell did she do to her hair? It was the one thing she had going for her.”

And then she laughs, completing my mortification.

Pushing past a crowd of people who are making their way out of the cold and into the diner, I throw on the hood of my coat and burst through the restaurant doors, dashing headlong into the night. The ground of the parking lot is slushy and wet, and even though it’s been recently plowed and salted, the leftover snow has been packed and crushed into ice, making the pavement treacherous and uneven.

Sometime in the past hour it began snowing again, the flakes falling lightly in the air, covering the parked cars with a dusting of powder that sparkles and makes everything in this filthy place look deceptively pure. When I look up at a streetlamp above me to see how hard the snow is coming down, I stumble and nearly fall, crushing the thin takeout box in my hand.

I cry out when my ankle twists in a bank of snow, and I don’t know if it’s snowflakes melting on my face or if I’m crying, but my face is wet and my vision blurred.

So this is what hell is like—not a landscape of fire that licks at your open wounds, turning you to ash, but a tundra of ice, where you freeze to death nursing your broken heart, watching it beat slower and slower until it rests, motionless, in your palm.

I wonder if anyone else has noticed how this kind of hell burns too.

I’m almost to my car, a salt-rusted and heavily dented Ford Focus I inherited on my sixteenth birthday, when I hear my name.

“Katniss!”

Peeta’s voice reaches my spine before it even touches my ears, wrapping around it like a grappling hook and yanking me back toward him. I grimace against the pain and force myself to keep walking.

Behind me I can hear his heavy tread as he jogs toward me, crunching the snow beneath his feet, and my heart leaps to my throat, threatening to escape and run away into the night, disappearing forever into the darkness. But I don’t turn around to face him. I can’t. I’m too ashamed. He probably hates me.

I’d been so stupid, not to tell him. It would have been better for him to pity me. It would have been better than hating himself, and then me. A pang of guilt hits me like jackknifing semi, slamming into me head on, when I think about how much suffering I might have saved him if I’d only told him the truth.

Through my tears I manage to place the takeout box on the roof of my car and fumble to unlock the driver’s-side door. My fingers are numb, and I’m numb too, and my entire body trembles from the cold and the panic.

“Katniss,” he says again, much closer this time, and I know there’s no way I can escape him.

He’s too close.

I’ll never escape him—the thought of him, the memory of him, whoever he is now.

“For fuck’s sake,” he says, sounding winded and breathless— _why? He’s barely run at all_. “I know it’s you. And I know you can hear me.”

I exhale and force myself to take a deep, shuddering breath. The cold air burns my lungs—there’s so much fire inside me, too much, and I’m already struggling to contain it. But I risk a conflagration and turn my head, making myself look at him. The details of his face are hard to make out through my tears, but I think he looks annoyed, or surprised, by what he sees.

He stops short a handful of feet away, his cheeks already pink from the nip in the air. “Jesus,” he exhales when our eyes meet.

That’s what he gives me—two breathless syllables—in exchange for all my pride.

“What do you want?” I groan, embarrassed by the tears welling in my eyes. I know it’s possibly the worst thing I could say to him, especially after all this time. But it seems like I’m destined to hurt him, to say and do all the wrong things.

He takes another couple steps toward me and frowns. “Hey to you too.”

“Hey,” I echo, sounding like some desolate ghost.

I’m trying not to betray everything that’s churning inside me at the sight of him, threatening to incinerate me. A tear slips down my cheek, scorching a path down my frozen skin, and I swipe it away impatiently, like it’s blood on my hands I don’t want him to see, the evidence of my crimes best kept hidden away from the victim.

To be clear, neither one of us gives a shit about the pleasantries, of the “hellos” and “how do you dos” and “good to see you agains.” What Peeta is saying—what he’s _asking_ , really—is why I ran past his booth instead of stopping to see him, how long had I known he was there and chose not to speak to him, avoiding him. If I ever planned to see him again, or if that was it, a final, wordless goodbye, the choked-out death rattle of a lifelong friendship.

But I don’t give him any of those answers because I could ask many of the same things of him, and because I’m stubborn, and my silence is the only defense I have left against this person standing in front of me, this implacable-looking wall of a man.

He relents first, at least a little. “Look,” he sighs, running one of his gloved hands over his buzz cut, a lifelong habit that amounts to nothing now that he has no hair to muss. “I didn’t see you in there. Or I would have said hi.”

“Would you.” It’s not a question.

He frowns at me so deeply the lines on his forehead look like trenches. The entire Army could hide in those trenches, sheltered from enemy fire. “Exactly how big of a dick do you think I am?”

“Now?” A choked sob escapes me, and I hate myself for it almost as much as I hate him. “I don’t know. But I know you’re the kind of dick who enlists in the Army without so much of a word— _in months_ —to his best friend.”

“Is that what we are?” he laughs mirthlessly. “Still? Even now? Like today, here, the two of us—” He points back and forth between the two of us, as though there was any mistaking who he means. “This is two best friends talking?”

I remain silent. The Peeta I knew, the one I loved—would never have mocked me like this.

“Okay, then. Let’s talk.” He takes another step toward me, close enough to touch now. We stand under one of the lights in the parking lot, its pool of light illuminating us and casting the rest of the world in shadow. There’s only him, and me, and everything that stands between us. “How’s college, Katniss?”

“Like you’d expect,” I answer bitterly. If he’d come with me to State, he’d know. “How’s boot camp?”

“Like you’d expect,” he says, sounding every bit as bitter as I do.

I press the side of my face to my shoulder, using the hood of my coat to wipe away my tears. My fingers are cold, so I bury them in my coat pockets, balling my hands into tight fists. “Why did you come out here?” I whisper. “Was it to p—punish me?”

Or was it to mock me and everything we used to be?

He looks away, the muscles of his jaw rolling and knotting from the tension, and seems to consider his answer. Or maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it was nothing more than a conditioned response that brought him out here, a learned behavior acquired over the many years we looked out for and protected each other. Muscle memory. Something heartbreak and boot camp hadn’t broken him of yet.

“I didn’t want you to think I saw you in there and ignored you,” he finally says, his voice a little softer when he looks back at me and sees how hard I’m crying now. “And my mom—” he pauses as if he’s fighting some war within himself, his clear blue eyes, so pale in the winter night, look at me almost regretfully. He sighs, visibly losing the battle. “She’s blind if she thinks you’re any less beautiful now than you’ve ever been.” He reaches out with one hand and removes my hood, careful not to touch me. A small, sad smile makes its way to his lips when he assesses my cropped hair, how the braid he always loved to tug is nothing but a memory now. “It’s cute on you. Really.”

“I look like a boy,” I blurt through my tears, not asking for refutation but because I know, with my lack of curves and absence of tits, my haircut makes me look like a middle-school boy in an amateur production of Peter Pan.

He laughs, despite how fucked up everything is between us. “If that was even the tiniest bit true, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

I think about that, weighing the implications of what he’s said and how much better our lives would be right now if things were only slightly different. “I kind of wish I was a boy,” I whisper.

Peeta flinches like my words are a gunshot, and I backpedal frantically, desperate to un-hurt him— _why isn’t that a thing, unhurting someone? Why is it so much easier to destroy someone than it is to build them up?_

“That’s not what I meant,” I whimper. “I don’t want to change the way you f—felt about me. I just—I thought we were always going to be best friends. And now we’re _this_ , which is like n—nothing at all.” Swiping away the tears, I look down at my water-soaked hands. They’re so cold. I’m so cold. I stuff my hands into my coat pockets, my right hand curling around my car keys, the metal sticking to my frozen skin. My teeth chatter loudly as I shudder, missing the warmth he always brought to my life.

“Here,” Peeta says resignedly, slipping off his gloves and holding them out to me. When I don’t move to take them from him, he shakes them a little at me. “Come on, don’t be such a stubborn ass, Katniss. Take the damn gloves.” When I still don’t take them, he reaches out and grabs my right hand, roughly prising my car keys out of it and tossing them onto the hood of my car. Then puts the glove on for me like I’m a child.

And I let him.

I close my eyes, basking in the fact that he’s touching me, and once my hand is swimming inside his massively over-large glove, I hold out my left hand too.

“You’re a piece of work, aren’t you?” he grouses, chuckling despite himself.

As soon as my fingers slip into the glove, I clasp his hands with both of mine, holding them to share the warmth. I hear his breath catch in his throat, but I’m too scared to look up at him, reminded of what I saw and how badly I fucked up the last time we were standing close like this. So I stare at our clasped hands instead, both of us breathing so hard the air around us becomes a thick fog, the evaporating heat of our bodies mingling as it floats upward into the night.

I don’t know how long we stand like this, the snow falling onto our shoulders and noses and hair, silently holding hands. The moment could last for minutes or hours or days—we seem to be frozen in it forever. Leaning forward, I press my forehead to his chest, and I know Peeta’s okay with that because he rests his chin on the top of my head and sighs, the tension and anger seeping out of him at our touch.

The cars pass by on Rochester Road, their wheels noisily churning up the slush on the pavement, and we stand together in the silence, listening to the snow fall and the stoplights of the intersection turn, the muted sounds of laughter wafting out into the night from inside the restaurant, and the sound of each other’s breathing, and we say nothing and everything all at the same time.

“Peeta!” a friendly voice barks out, interrupting us in our thoughts, and Peeta pulls away, pivoting to greet my father. He keeps his grip on my hands, though, with one of his, and my heart hammers at the thought that he’s reluctant to let go, even to say hi to people he loves.

“Hi, Mr. E,” Peeta says, a genuine smile in his voice. He squeezes my hands once and then releases them, stepping forward to hug my dad.

“It’s good to see you, son,” my dad says, shooting a glance back at me and giving a slight nod to signal that, whatever has gone wrong between Peeta and me, he approves of the two of us fighting to work it out.

“Look how handsome you are,” my mom tells him, reaching up and playfully rubbing her hand over his shorn hair.

“Thanks, Mrs. E,” Peeta says, sounding a bit bashful, like he honestly doesn’t know he’s fucking gorgeous by every objective measure, even now with that harsh haircut and intimidating build.

“Has the Army been treating you right?” she asks, sounding like the concerned mom I know her to be when it comes to him. “Three square meals and all that?”

“Yeah, they feed us alright, I guess,” Peeta laughs. “They kind of have to so we don’t drop dead.”

“That’s good,” my dad says. “And now you don’t have to compete with two older brothers for scraps, right?”

“That’s right, sir,” he says, and his words send a jolt of awareness through me, a reminder that he’s changed—he’s someone new. The old Peeta I knew never would have _yes, sirred_ my dad, although he was always respectful of him. He’s changed so much already, in such a short time. I panic, my blood speeding and racing through me, as I think about all the unfathomable ways he will continue to change—and how I’m helpless to stop it.

Prim hangs back behind my mom, shy for maybe the first time in her life, and when Peeta looks down at her, she shrinks back farther, peering at him with one eye from around my mom’s arm.

Peeta squats down to bring himself down to her level.

“Is that Primrose?” he asks, pawing at his chin as though he is deep in thought. “Or did you guys trade her in for some kind of _giant_?”

Her face peeks out from around my mom’s back, a wide, gap-toothed grin on her face. “I’m not a giant— _you_ are!” she laughs, squealing so loudly at him I’d swear there was a pig getting branded on the ass somewhere nearby.

My sister’s always loved Peeta—to be the point of being _in_ love with him.

_Well, kid, you’re gonna have to get in line_.

She leaps at him and throws her arms around his neck, hugging him so tightly her eyes squeeze shut from the effort. Peeta stands to full height, bringing her with him, and she laughs, winding her legs around his torso, her shearling boots leaving salt-stains and dirty slush on the back of his coat.

“I missed you,” she says in a comically loud whisper, planting a wet, smacking kiss on his cheek, and he laughs and tells her he missed her too.

An unpleasant sensation spreads through me at the sight of their reunion, and it is followed rapidly by another—self-loathing supplanting jealousy. Because am I actually jealous of my kid sister and Peeta, at how uncomplicated and easy and joyful their relationship is?

Yes.

I want to throw my arms around him and kiss him, telling him how much I miss him, to wind my legs around him and cling to him in the way that a woodland creature clings to a tree for life. And I want him to laugh and hold me and tell me he misses me too.

The catch is that I don’t deserve any of those things, and my baby sister does.

“Alright, Primrose, stop mauling him,” my mom laughs, but Peeta hushes her with assurances of how he doesn’t mind at all and how Prim’s spoiling him for all future greetings—and it sounds so much like the Peeta I always knew I find myself wondering if he’s not still in there, after all. If maybe I’ve been too pessimistic, assuming that because he doesn’t love me anymore and looks so different now that everything about him must have changed, and for the worse.

Maybe this is fundamentally the same Peeta, and a better version of him too—because this one has nothing to do with me.

“Do you have plans for your time home?” my dad asks, reaching out and peeling Prim off Peeta, setting her back down on the ground on her own two feet because she’s not a baby anymore, even if Peeta is okay catering to her whims.

Peeta shoots a look over his shoulder, back toward me. “Oh, I think just catching up with friends.”

They’re a handful of words, innocuous-sounding and vague, and they could refer to anyone or anything. But, coupled with his glance, I take them like the gift I know them to be, tucking them into the cavity inside my chest where my heart used to be. At least he means to talk to me now, tonight, here. He’s giving me that much. And maybe he’s only pretending he’s still my friend, not wanting to hurt my parents or drag them into our fallout, but I find myself hoping he means it—that I’m still that to him, if I can’t be more. That catching up is something that is possible—that it’s not too late for that.

“Sounds like a great idea,” my mom says. “I hope you’ll have a little time to swing by and see us again. You know you’re welcome anytime, even Christmas Day—that is, if you’re looking for a quiet place to get away.” She laughs, tickling Prim, and my sister behaves exactly as my mom intended, wriggling away from her touch and squealing at the top of her lungs.

Peeta laughs too, and my heart expands to twice its size watching the only people I’m sure I love all together again, if only for the moment. “Yeah, I’d like that. Hopefully I can.”

My dad shoots a look at me, then gives a pointed look at my mother. “Alright, honey. We ought to get going, and let the kids catch up with one another.”

“Right you are,” she says and then adds with a little smile, clearly remembering the hot date she has planned, “Besides, it’s getting awfully close to _someone’s_ bedtime.”

( _Peeta in a singlet, Peeta in a singlet...Chris Evans wrestling Peeta in a singlet..._ )

“No!” Prim stomps her foot, coating the shins of my parents’ and Peeta’s pants in slush. “I only just saw him!” she wails to my mom, pointing at Peeta, her heart already breaking from the unfairness of it.

_Yeah, kid. Tell me about it_.

The object of her affection ruffles her hair fondly. “Hey, I promise I’ll stop by to see you, okay? And then you can show me what Santa got you.”

She doesn’t miss the inflection in his voice, the nudging reminder to be good because now, more than ever, that jolly bastard version of Big Brother is watching. Peeta’s always been so clever, knowing exactly the right thing to say.

Unlike me.

“We’d love that, Peeta,” my mom says, reaching up for a hug. “We _all_ miss you,” she adds softly, meaningfully, and it makes me glad his back is to me and he can’t see my face.

I watch him hugging my parents—how his body engulfs even my dad, who is gangly and lean—as they wish each other a Merry Christmas. He stands by them as they load into their car, and we watch them drive off into the night, watching the left blinker of their minivan flashing as my dad carefully makes the turn onto 12 Mile to head home, watching them because it’s easier than facing whatever we’ve become.

After several moments of quietly standing side by side, Peeta turns to me, scanning my bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes for the truth. “Did you even want to see me again?” he asks warily.

How do I even begin to answer that question— _me_? Me… the failure with words, the closed-hearted girl, the person who loves silently and self-loathingly and in a way that slowly kills?

I should tell him that I wanted to see him the minute I ran away from him and every minute since then. That a day without him in it feels like a facsimile of life, some bullshit replica that looks and tastes and feels cheap and empty. That my life without him in it isn’t living—it’s barely surviving. It’s not even _subsisting_. That I’m starved for him, and the only thing that could change any of that is the sight of him, the steadiness and warmth and light he brings to everything.

But I’m _me_ , and so I answer him the only way I know how, hoping it’s good enough.

I gesture toward the crumpled takeout box on my car, praying that what’s inside is salvageable. As soon as I saw him in the restaurant, I knew it was his, the only peace offering I could think to give him, if I could only pluck up the courage to face him. “I saved a piece for you.” I look at him a little reproachfully out of the corner of my eye. “If you even eat that kind of shit anymore.”

He reaches around me, standing so close my lungs seize up, every muscle in my body tensing, and grabs the box off the roof of the car, opening it and looking inside. It feels like this is the moment of truth—this seemingly stupid, inconsequential gesture is the thing that will make us or break us. It is monumental. It is me, offering the man I love the sweetest and best part of what I have to give.

I want—I _need_ him to see that.

He looks inside the box for a moment, and I wait for his reaction. Will he be unimpressed, confused, derisive, dismissive? Will he chuck it across the parking lot, pissed off that what I have to offer him is so inadequate and pathetic, my _non-answer_ answer to a sincere and fair question?

“Are you _kidding_ me?” he asks, my insides plummeting to the ground at the incredulity I hear in his voice.

And then he smiles, his face brighter than if every star in the universe went supernova at the same exact time.

“Do I _eat_ this kind of shit anymore? Do you know how many calories I can pack away in a day? I could eat the whole damn pie—I would love to eat the whole damn pie. I’ve been craving some of _this_ ,” he looks up at me, and I know he’s not just talking about the damn pie anymore. “For _weeks_ ,” he says, his voice so low it’s barely audible over the rumble of the traffic on the road.

Then he does something I don’t expect, because it’s so much like the boy he was—he picks up the piece of pie with his bare hands and takes a massive bite out it.

“Lucky for you,” he says around the mouthful, “I’m the sharing type.”

My face heats, thinking of Peeta and the things I’d like to share with him, and I’m thankful my face is chapped from the cold. He smiles at me and holds the slice out, raising his eyebrows to encourage me to go ahead.

I lean forward and open my mouth, taking a small bite.

“That’s all you got?” he teases, taking another comically large bite, swallowing it so quickly I wonder if he even tastes it.

Rolling my eyes, I swallow and lean forward, taking a bigger one. He watches me the entire time, a small smile on his face, and his eyes fall to my lips.

“You—ah—got some…” he gestures to my mouth to indicate I have crumbs and pie filling on my lower lip, as if I can’t tell that I’m wearing half the damn pie on my face.

“Thanks for pointing that out,” I say dryly.

I raise my hands to wipe off my mouth, but Peeta tuts at me. “Not with my gloves, you don’t.” Reaching out, he swipes the pie off with his thumb, sucking the pad of his finger clean.

The simple intimacy of that makes my stomach knot, and I wave off the next bite he offers, knowing that the time has come for me to open up—as much as I’m capable of. I start with the simplest thing I know to be true, something any estranged friend might say to another, hoping I can work toward everything that’s more complicated.

“I’ve missed this,” I tell him, holding my heart out—the sad, little misshapen thing—in the palm of my hand as an offering. I take a deep breath and make myself add, “You and me.”

Peeta sighs and drops the pie crust in the box, placing it back onto the roof of my car, our moment of levity gone. He scoops up a thin layer of snow from the hood, rolling it around in his hands to wash them clean, and then wipes his hands off on his pants to dry them, jamming them into his coat pockets. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, he looks at me again.

“So... we need to talk,” he says with another sigh.

Maybe I’m the most abject and despicable of all creatures, but at his response to my admission—his hesitation to look at me, the look I see in his eyes when he finally does, and then _those words… those words… those words_ —I immediately break down crying, clasping at my stomach. _Did he stab me there too?_

His eyes go wide as the first sob escapes me, and when I see a family walking to their car, a mom and dad holding their two little children, I clamp both my hands over my mouth to muffle the sound. The family looks at us in concern anyway, and their young daughter, dressed in a canary yellow coat, glowers at Peeta like he just murdered the last unicorn.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he asks me in alarm, pulling me in for a hug. His hand pats my back like I’m an inconsolable infant, and that makes me cry harder, for all the things we’ll never be or do or have.

“Nothing good ever starts that way,” I sob.

It’s a miracle he can understand me at all, but he hums as he thinks this over—his chest rumbling from the vibration—and I bury my face harder against him, needing to be as close to him as I can for as long as he’ll hold me.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Sometimes it does.”

He lets me cry like that for a few minutes, patting my back from time to time, and at some point he puts my hood back on and brushes the snow off my coat.

“Hey, is she alright, buddy?” I hear some guy walking by call out in our direction.

“Yeah, I got her. Thanks,” Peeta tells him, not sounding at all thankful, and he cradles the back of my head with one of his hands, the entirety of my skull fitting beneath one of his massive palms.

As soon as we’re alone again, he cranes his neck, and even through the fabric of my hood his breath is warm against my ear. The contrast between his heat and the icy night air sends a shiver down my spine, and I shudder. “I’m so sorry, Katniss,” he murmurs, holding me tighter to him.

“For leaving?” I sniffle into his chest, trying half-heartedly not to get snot on his coat.

“No.” He shakes his head. “I had to do that.”

“Because of—b-because of me?” I hiccup.

“No. I mean… at first that’s what I thought it was, but it’s not fair of me to put that on you. That’s not really what it was.” He rubs my back once, his hand moving in an arc, firmly pressing his hand against me like he can impress his words into me. “It was something I had to do for myself.”

“I w-wish you’d just come to State with me instead.”

“I know, I know.” His voice is hushed and tinged with regret. “A part of me does too. But someday, I think—I hope—you’ll understand. I’m better off where I ended up.” He pauses for a second, and then adds, “For the most part.”

I make myself pull away from him because I have no place in his arms and because he’s basically admitted it’s better that way. He’s happy where he is—or at least satisfied with it—and I ought to find it in myself to be satisfied too, even if it’s everything I never wanted.

“Hold on a sec, okay?” he says, grabbing my car keys off the hood and moving around to the passenger side door. He unlocks it and, with one sharp tug, forces the frozen door open. I hear my glove compartment box pop open and Peeta rummage through the contents, and after a moment he shuts the car door and walks back to me with a wad of fast food napkins clutched in his fists. “Here.”

“Thanks.” I take the wad and cram it into my pocket, except for one napkin, which I use to noisily blow my nose. _Attractive as always, Everdeen_. “Then what are you sorry for?” I ask, looking at the snotted up napkin in my hand instead of into those eyes that are more familiar to me than my own skin.

In my peripheral vision I see him shrug. “For trying to kiss you.”

His words are simple, my devastation absolute.

“You regret that.” I let his words sink in, each and every bitter flavor of them. They are like bile clinging to the back of my throat. They are colder than a night spent passed out on the bathroom tile, curled around the toilet. And they are as embarrassing and painful to me as the blood that seeped out of me, staining my thighs, the first and only time I let a guy between them.

“Well, I can’t really say I regret trying. In some ways it’s better to know, right? Instead of always just wondering.” Peeta laughs humorlessly and runs his hands over the short stubble of his buzz cut, his fingers gripping uselessly at it. I can tell he’s frustrated, but I don’t know whether it’s from the memory of that night or if it’s because he feels the urge to hold onto something that’s no longer there. He exhales and meets my eye, his expression troubled. “But it fucked everything up— _I_ fucked everything up. And I’m sorry I did that to you—to us. It’s just…” His voice trails off, and he looks away, scanning the distance like he can see the boy and girl standing together in the gymnasium, holding hands as they walked out onto the dance floor together. “With the dancing… and the music… and the way you looked— _fucking gorgeous_ , by the way, in that dress. I didn’t tell you that…”

“You said I looked nice,” I counter, feeling defensive of the boy who’d looked down at me, placing his hand on my cheek, stroking his thumb lightly across my jaw, like I was something rarer and more fleeting than a meteor flashing across an ink-black sky.

“ _Nice_.” Peeta practically spits out the word, disgusted by it. “That’s not what I said just now. I said _fucking gorgeous_ , and that still falls short.”

I smile, looking down shyly at my boots. My heart is broken, and he regrets what happened—or what almost did—but he thought I was fucking gorgeous, and for a second that’s enough.

When I look back up at him he’s smiling ruefully at me. “You really have no idea…” He reaches out, and because I don’t have a braid to tug anymore, he tugs at the faux fur fringe of my hood. “And you were in my arms, my _fucking gorgeous_ best friend… and earlier that night Annie fed me some bullshit line about you...”

My heart stutters in my chest. I know what Annie must have said to him, or the essence of it anyway. That I’d woken up one night last May, drenched in sweat and breathless, my hand between my legs and his name still on my tongue, and then I knew.

_She was wrong to have told him that..._

“What did she say?”

Peeta looks away, sounding pissed. “She said you were in love with me.”

_...But she wasn’t wrong._

“Did she.” I look down at the ground, watching myself burrow the toe of my boot into the snow so that my face doesn’t betray me.

“And then it was all I could think about, the whole night. I had to dance the _whole night_ with Cashmere Fuckin’ Callahan—” he says her name with disdain, which makes no sense to me because there was no girl more beautiful or desirable in our high school than Cashmere Fuckin’ Callahan, “—and the whole time all I could think about was how I should have asked _you_. I should have been there with _you_. I don’t know...”

Peeta shakes his head, struggling with some kind of doubt, and I look up at him to encourage him to go on, even though it could kill us both. “I don’t know. I thought maybe I had a shot after all. You’d never given me any indication that you thought of me as anything other than… family, I guess... but then Annie told me that you… that you… and then my mind started filling in all these blanks…and it was stupid of me to do that. But I wanted to believe it. And thinking about it now, I feel like such an asshole... But when I finally worked up the nerve to ask you to dance, and I was holding you, and the way your waist fit beneath my hands…” He looks at his hands, his fingers splayed wide, as if he can still feel the way his body fit to mine. “And your fingers… your fingers… Christ, Katniss, I don’t even think you realized you were doing it, but your arms were around my neck, and your fingers were in my hair, and I thought to myself, ‘holy fuck, this is actually going to happen.’ I’d wanted it to happen since forever, I think. I don’t know if I was five or fifteen, or if it was sometime in between, but when Annie told me you had feelings for me, I realized I was always going to fall over my feet for you, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, no matter how wrong it was.”

He lightly kicks the icicles hanging from the wheel well of my car, knocking them loose to watch them fall, stabbing the snow one by one. He might as well pick one up and use it as an ice pick to my heart. “I should have known it wasn’t real. I don’t know what bullshit Annie was pulling—maybe Finnick put her up to it—but I should have known better. And I’m sorry I fucked up like that. And I’m sorry I put you in that position.”

Seeing him like this—angry, dejected, bitter, confused… it’s torture. For both of us. And it’s all my fault. I bury my face in my hands, overcome with remorse and longing.

“Come on,” he urges, pulling at my hands to try to get a look at me. When he sees I’m crying again, he grows desperate. He’s never seen me cry like this before—no one has. My whole life, I’ve always saved my tears for my pillow, for the quiet hours of the night, when the watchful eyes of the world are closed, lost to their own dreams and nightmares. I let the world think I’m an impenetrable fortress of ice instead of what I really am, a tenement block gone up in flames.

But now I let him see how damaged I am. It’s all lost, anyway.

“No, please. Don’t cry.” His blue eyes lock on mine, holding me captive. They’re fierce and wild and pleading. “Katniss. Look, I don’t ever want to hurt you again. We’re gonna find a way past this, I know it. And it’ll be good again between us. It’ll be okay. We’ll always have each other. No matter what, I will _always_ be your friend.”

I shake my head solemnly. “No.”

There is nothing else to say to the liar in front of me. Oh, the lie is well-intentioned. It’s the same one you give to a loved one who is diagnosed with terminal cancer. _It’ll be okay. We’ll give it everything we got. We are going to fight this_. It’s what you have to say because the truth is an ugly, monstrous, terrifying thing, and you protect the ones you love from monsters, if you can.

But the toxins run too deep, the cancer infecting everything between us, and it’s eating us alive, from the inside out. _It will never be okay. We have nothing left. And the war is already lost_.

With my one word— _no_ —he wilts, his shoulders slumping in defeat. _There he is. The boy_. Seeing him like that, I understand why Peeta enlisted. The boy would never believe in his worth—but the man might.

I only hope he can understand my reasons, too.

“No? You hate me that badly?” he says.

I answer, weighing every syllable with meaning so that my words fall as slowly on him as the snowflakes drifting from the sky, blanketing him. “I could _never_ hate you.”

The boy sighs in relief.

But I give him more—I give him the absolution he deserves. This is on me.

“I should have been honest with you. For two weeks, Peeta. _Two weeks_ you tried calling me, texting, emailing. You showed up at my house, at my job, and I hid like the chickenshit I am because I was too scared to talk to you. So I don’t blame you for giving up, fucking off to Europe, and not caring anymore.”

“You think I don’t care?”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”

“Well I do,” he replies, his eyes locked onto mine. “And I always will.”

_IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou…_

The words play over and over on a loop in my brain until I have to physically bite my tongue to hold them back.

He and I stand in silence for a few moments, neither one of us sure how to proceed. Frankly speaking, I don’t have the guts for what I need to tell him next.

Peeta must sense this, because he nudges me along. “So what should you have been honest with me about?”

I try to speak, but nothing comes out. It’s like I’ve been strangled, and what escapes is something like a death rattle, a wheezing, rasping sound no louder than the claws of a rat scrabbling on a tile floor. I clear my throat and try again.

“That I _wanted_ you to kiss me.”

“But—” Peeta shakes his head, his eyebrows furrowing as he works to puzzle this out. “Then why didn’t—was it because of where we were? Was it too public? I didn’t even think about that—”

“No.” I interrupt him before he can go too far down the wrong track.

He blinks and runs a hand over his head. “So what was it then?”

I choose my answer carefully, knowing this is the point of no return. I settle for something simple, hoping he will somehow magically intuit everything I mean by it. “I wasn’t ready for you.”

He huffs in relief and smiles, and my heart sinks because I know he hasn’t understood. “So you weren’t ready… that’s okay. What’s gonna help? Dates? Because I can take you out on dates… for the next ten days... a date a day, starting right now. And after I graduate OSUT I might get leave, if my unit’s not already deployed and…”

“Peeta,” I cut him off gently, “we’ve gone out on something like a million dates, if you think about it.”

“Okay,” he nods. “Then you’re going to have to be more specific. Pretend you’re talking to the world’s biggest fucking idiot right now, and just... walk me through it.”

I say these words slowly too, but instead of gentle snowflakes, I know they’ll feel like shards of ice, the tiny crystals that sting your face as you walk into the wind. “I wasn’t ready for _you_... I—I didn’t want you to be my first.”

A look of understanding dawns on his face. “You’d never been kissed before,” he says, and I don’t miss how his eyes fall to my lips. I wonder what he thinks about them now, if he’s seeing them as they really are. Nothing special. Belonging to no one special. I watch his expression change as he soaks in this information, how the initial shock morphs into disappointment and then resentment. “And you were hoping for someone better.”

“God no,” I laugh, but it’s a sickly sound. That Peeta could think that of himself, or of me…

“First times are awful,” I try to explain. “They’re awkward and mis-timed, they’re messy and embarrassing. They’re teeth and spit and silence and… and… tears, and I didn’t want that with you. I mean, could you imagine doing that to our friendship, risking our friendship on _that_? Because of me? What if it could have been something… good… but we couldn't see past the awkward?”

I look up at the sky, letting the snow fall onto my face for a second, and close my eyes. When I muster the courage to look at him again, he’s crossed his arms, and he’s looking at me in some new way I’ve never seen before, not from him.

“So you’ve kissed a guy—some fuck I don’t want to think about—and now you’re ready. Is that it?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I know it’s too la—”

He cuts me off, “Well, I hate to break it to you, Katniss, but there’s a few other firsts out there. Might as well get yourself fucked too, while you’re at it.”

I flinch like he’s whipped me, his words lashing at my still-open wounds. They sting, and I smart, and Peeta sees this and understands—that the girl he held in his arms is gone now too, that she ran off to college and got herself fucked.

“You’re seeing someone,” he groans, running a hand over the peach fuzz on his scalp. “Is that it? Let me guess… you met him in one of your classes. He was your lab partner, right? Or… fuck… no. It was a coffee shop. Or the Union. Any one of the run-of-the-mill, bullshit ways people meet in college, I bet.”

Maybe he’ll think less of me knowing the truth, but I can’t have him think there is anyone but him. In this entire world, anywhere I have ever gone, anywhere I will ever go, there is only him, and that’s something I will have to learn to live with now that he’s gone. “I’m not seeing anyone,” I tell him in a small voice. “I’ve gone out on some dates and fooled around… casually... but I’m not seeing anyone.”

...Least of all the guy who fucked me.

“So… why?” Peeta looks at me, his expression so distraught and confused I have to look away. “Why would you choose to be with some random asshole? I just… I don’t understand. Help me to understand.”

“You weren’t a virgin, Peeta.” I swallow thickly, thinking about him fucking Glimmer Kearney back in the tenth grade or Clove Kurpinski for something like half of our junior year. And that’s to say nothing about the urban legend involving him having sex on the school bus after a wrestling meet with one, or possibly both, of the Leeg sisters, when we were seniors. “Not even close,” I add under my breath.

“So you were... what?” he asks, looking pissed. “Trying to prove a point? For things I did when I thought I never had a shot with you? Because if I thought I did, do you think for a second I would have—”

“I wasn’t trying to prove anything,” I snap, hating that I feel judged for only doing what he’s chosen to do himself, even if we’re going about it different ways. “Not to you, anyway. Look, I know what you’re thinking, so you don’t have to look at me like that, okay?”

Peeta looks away, gnawing at the inside of his cheek, and I can tell he’s gearing up to say something, to launch into one of his impassioned speeches I know so well, so I get the rest out while I still can. “I just wanted… to be _good_ , and ready if I ever had that chance. To feel like I was bringing something to the table too. And then, suddenly it was there… and I panicked because I didn’t want you to be my first. What I should have told you back in June—what I wish I’d told you—was that I wanted you to be my _best_.”

“Fuck,” he sighs, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “How can you say something like that?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. And I know it’s too late—”

“No,” he shakes his head. “You really don’t know.” He reaches out and grips my elbow firmly, squeezing it with every syllable out of his mouth. “Katniss, you are better than _good_. And knowing what to do with a guy’s dick—or how to sleep with a guy—isn’t what makes you perfect for me.”

I want to kiss him for those words, to climb my way up along his body and root myself to him. But I still need my best friend—I still need to talk to him—now more than ever. I haven’t talked to anyone about what happened. But I have to tell him.

“I didn’t sleep with a guy,” I whisper, and Peeta’s hand falls away from my elbow. “I fucked one—or—or he fucked me.”

He frowns down at me, the trenches on his forehead now ocean-deep. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

When I don’t immediately speak he leans down, looking at me so closely I have no choice but to make eye contact with him. “Tell me, Katniss,” he urges softly, but I hear the panic edging into his voice.

A car passes by us slowly, its wheels crunching and compacting the freshly fallen snow on the concrete, and I shudder, thinking about how it sounds like breaking bones.

My words come out a half-whisper, half-whimper. “It was so much worse than I thought it would be.”

“You gotta tell me what happened, and you gotta do it quick, because I am _this_ close to freaking the fuck out.” He clenches his jaw tightly and waits for me to continue, standing stock-still and silent.

I know what he’s thinking, what’s he panicking about, so I start speaking as quickly as I can. Because, no matter how awful it was, at least—thank god—it wasn’t _that_.

“We’d hung out a few times in a group or whatever, around our friends, at like parties and tailgates and whatever. And after homecoming we fooled around a little…”

“Fooled around, how?”

I grimace as I think about it. “I went down on him.”

Peeta nods, and that action—the simplicity of it, the absence of comment or judgment, emboldens me to continue.

“And then the weekend after that I went to a party at Pi Kappa Alpha. He’s one of the brothers there, a junior, and anyway… After a while, Cato took me up to his room. And it happened so fast.” I wipe away a tear, comforted by the thought that it’s Peeta’s gloves on my hands, that it’s Peeta standing in front of me, and that’s nothing if not a miracle.

“He started kissing me, and before I knew it my dress was up around my waist—and he had a condom on and was climbing over me and—and it hurt. Fuck—I don’t remember much—we were both so drunk—but it hurt. And I remember crying the entire time, muffling the sound with my hand so no one would hear me and think—and after a few minutes he was done, and he got up like nothing happened… and he said he had to go back down to the party. I—I stayed up in his room for a while trying to clean myself up, but there was so much blood… it was all over the sheets too, and when I took them off, I saw it was on the mattress… I didn’t think…. I didn’t think it was _supposed_ to be like that. And I was so embarrassed I left the party as quickly as I could... and I haven’t heard from him since. I don’t know… I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me, but I—I bled for a week. And I haven’t so much as thought about having sex again. Which is probably a good thing, because apparently I’m terrible at it.”

“Are you for real right now?”

Peeta crosses his arms tightly against his body, his face as rigid as a stone. He looks glacial and fiery all at once—his ire transforming him into every possible act of god—an earthquake, a blizzard, a ferocious, storming hurricane. He almost looks biblical in his fury. I've never once seen him like this—so unlike the cheerful, sunny boy I grew up with. This man… this man, I barely recognize. Which makes it as terrifying as it is heartbreaking, knowing that I’m ultimately responsible for it.

“You’re so mad at me,” I choke out.

He reaches out for me suddenly, and his hands— _christ, they’re freezing_ —grip the sides of my face. “If you think I’m mad at you,” he says in a clipped staccato, his face inches from mine, “then you do not fucking know me at all.”

I don’t know what I was expecting him to say—whatever it was, it wasn’t that—and my mouth falls open in shock.

He nudges my chin with one finger, shutting my mouth for me, and then moves his hand back to the side of my face. I lift one of my hands and press it to the back of his, anchoring him there, needing him to touch me, to hold me.

“You’re telling me some asshole fucked you before you were ready—and I don’t mean ready to get it over with, or ready for whatever shit you think you deserve—but before you were ready to have sex with him, _while you were wasted_ , Katniss, that he kept going while you were crying, that he got himself off and left you bleeding upstairs in his fucking bedroom, and then never called you again… and you think I’m mad at _you_?”

I nod, my lower lip trembling violently, even though I know he isn’t mad at me at all.

His pale blue eyes hold mine captive, and one of his thumbs caresses my lip. “I’m gonna kill him, Katniss. Where does he live—Pi Kappa Alpha, you said? His name’s… Cato? Because I’m getting Rye and Bran, and we’re going to kill him.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I whisper, barely audible over the wind whistling around the corner of the restaurant. But he’s still caressing my lower lip, coaxing me to stop trembling, and his thumb reads my words anyway like they’re written in Braille.

“Why not?”

“You...” I swallow, scrambling to make him understand why what he said feels wrong. “You don’t say things like that. Other guys, maybe. But not you. Don’t… don’t let them change you, turn you into something you’re not.”

He looks stricken by this, and his thumb pauses on my lip, although he doesn’t remove his hands from my face. “You think being in the Army is going to turn me into some kind of monster?”

“No, I didn’t say that.”

His eyes scan my face, easily uncovering the truth. “But you think it.”

How do I begin to tell him about all my worries for him? That, as infantry, he may actually have to kill someone someday, and then have to live with that the rest of his life. That he might accidentally kill children, or one of his fellow soldiers, and I won’t know how to help him—that I won’t be able to comfort him through that waking nightmare. That being a soldier may leave him with more scars than skin, and I won’t know how to touch him without reminding him of all the ways he hurts.

It won’t change a thing, sharing any of these fears with him, so I keep them to myself, shouldering what little I can for the both of us.

“I just always… loved… that you were gentle,” I tell him, and at that he gives a small smile and leans forward, pressing his lips to my forehead.

“I will always be gentle with you,” he murmurs. “But if you think I wouldn’t have tried killing someone to protect you even before I enlisted, then I think you have the wrong idea about me.”

I close my eyes at his words and let myself melt into his arms, feeling how safe I am there. Peeta wraps his arms around me, cradling my head to my chest, and kisses the top of my head.

So _this_ is what heaven feels like—a warm blanket on a blustery night, a face held up to the winter sun to bask in its heat, the way light glints off snow, transforming it into millions of precious gems—me, in my best friend’s arms, at Christmas.

“Hey, Peet,” a voice calls out, and without looking I already know it’s his brother Rye.

Peeta doesn’t let me go—he lets his brother see the way we’re holding each other—and this is how I know that everything is different between us.

“Yeah,” he calls back, holding me tighter.

“Mom wants to know if you’ll be joining us again for dinner or—”

“No,” Peeta answers without pausing. “I’m heading out with Katniss now.”

“And you want me to tell her that?” Rye asks.

“Yep.”

“Okay, but it’s your funeral, bro,” his brother quips, heading back toward the door. Before stepping through, he yells back over his shoulder, “Good seeing you again, Katniss.”

I wave my hand in his direction without pulling away from Peeta’s chest. No offense to Rye, but I couldn’t give a shit about him, and the feeling goes both ways.

“Where are we off to anyway?” Peeta asks, his voice muffled by the hood of my coat.

“Johanna’s having people over… we could go to her place,” I offer, hating the idea of it because I know I’ll have to share Peeta with all our friends—which means, at most, I’ll get five minutes of shouting at him over the drunken ruckus before he gets pulled in a hundred different directions.

“Eh,” he hedges, sounding like he hates the idea as much as I do. “It’s not that I don’t miss everyone—I do. But if it’s okay, I was sort of hoping I could spend every possible minute of the rest of my time home with just you?”

I pull back so he can see me smile, and when he sees my face he smiles back at me. “Okay,” I say, considering our options.

It’s too cold to stay outside much longer—we’re already half-frozen to death. And we can’t go to my house, or to his. And East Lansing is out, since the dorms are locked for the holidays and campus is a couple hours away.

“I have an idea,” I tell him, feeling shy at the thought of how it’ll look to him. But I don’t let myself run from that fear like I did in the past.

There’s somewhere we can be alone, somewhere I can afford, and because of that, it’s the first and only place that comes to mind.

“Alright,” he says, reaching out and plucking his gloves off my hands one by one, then tugging them back onto his. He picks up my car keys and places them in the palm of my hand, giving my hand a squeeze. “Let’s go.”

He doesn’t ask what my idea is or where we’re going. He simply walks around me in the narrow space between the parked cars, the fabric of his coat brushing against mine with a brisk _whish_ , and yanks open my frozen car door for me, reaching in to grab the ice scraper off the floorboards.

“Start her up, and I’ll scrape off the windows,” he offers, nudging the small of my back to encourage me to get moving.

I smile and climb into the car, thinking how I could get used to this kind of treatment, before I remember I can’t get used to it—that in ten days he’ll be gone, and I don’t know when I’ll see him again.

_Or if_.

It’s a pitch-black thought, maybe nothing more than a fit of melodrama inspired by the gloom of the night and the icy cold seeping into my body through the upholstery of my seat, but as I crank the sputtering engine and watch Peeta chip away at the veneer of ice covering my windshield, it occurs to me that I can’t—or won’t—take another minute with him for granted.

This is all we have, right now. And I’ve got to make it count.

So I allow myself to watch him scrape off the windows of my car, to stare at the way he chews on his bottom lip and furrows his brow in concentration, and I allow myself to hold his gaze when he catches me, to let him see that he’s all I can see.

And when he climbs into the passenger side and sits down, shutting the door behind him, and turns to look at me, I lean over the console and brush my lips lightly against his— a quick, chaste kiss, as a promise to be good to him—and I pull away before he can kiss me back.

For a first kiss, it isn’t awkward. It’s sweet and simple—toothless and drool-less and tearless— and although the best may be ahead of us, it will still be hard to beat this one because of the perfect smile that illuminates his face.

“I would have offered to clear off your car for you more often,” he grins, buckling himself in. “If I’d known that’s the thanks I could have gotten for it.” He looks at me mischievously while he slides a glove off his hand, and then he reaches out and curls his freezing cold fingers around the back of my neck.

“Oh Jesus Christ!” I shriek, laughing and shrinking away from him, and he laughs too.

_We’re going to be okay..._

His hand drops to my thigh, where he lets it rest, his thumb slowly stroking my leg back and forth, his fingers gently gripping me, and I feel myself growing warm all over, hot and hungry and restless, and with one touch my best friend has me considering whether I ought to give sex a second try.

_...More than okay._

As I ease out of the parking lot and take 12 Mile up to Woodward, Peeta and I ride in a companionable silence, listening to the heat streaming out of the vents and the wind rushing over my car. The roads have gotten treacherous and slick, and every time I slow to a red light or try to accelerate, my car fishtails and slides on the pavement. It ought to be a _two hands firmly planted on the wheel at 10 and 2 o’clock_ sort of situation, but instead I reach down and take his hand, twining our fingers together.

“You really think that’s a good idea?” he asks in amusement, pointing to our hands like they’re someone else’s—like he’s watching videos on youtube of a guy punching a kangaroo or some dipshit zorbing down a freeway.

But when I try to pull my hand out of his, he holds onto mine tighter, squeezing it and bringing it up to his lips. He runs his lips softly over the back of my hand like he’s trying to memorize the feel of my skin on his mouth, and I squirm a little in my seat, regretfully pulling it away from him after a couple minutes so I can flick on my car’s turn signal, even though there’s no one else on the road.

He knows where we are, but he leans forward anyway as we turn into the parking lot, looking out the snowy windshield and up at the hulking neon sign that looms over Woodward, a relic of a bygone era, that proudly, absurdly proclaims in some long-forgotten font: _The Islander Motel_.

We’ve practically lived across the street from the motel our entire lives, an old two-story motor inn built in the 60s, when Woodward Avenue was a popular spot for cruising cars and when the middle class had money to burn on frivolous overnights in suburbia, shacking up in hotels stocked with vibrating beds and bathtub jacuzzis. It probably hasn’t been updated since then, its decorative wrought iron railings are rusted and shot, and it looks like the place stays in business by renting to the down-on-their-luck by the week, but at least it’s not a seedy hourly joint, and it’s attached to a small diner, a little hovel named Monty’s that looks like something out of a Hopper painting, where we can grab breakfast in the morning.

I don’t care if this place smells like must and mildew, stale cigarettes and broken dreams. It’s somewhere we can be alone, just the two of us, which makes it everything I could possibly want.

“Well now I just feel cheap,” Peeta says with a crooked grin. “Are you gonna at least buy me dinner first?”

My face flushes from embarrassment, because I wasn’t thinking about that—well, not until he started stroking my thigh—and I’m sputtering my reply, some bullshit about my parents fucking for Christmas and how I may actually need therapy if we have to go back to my house, when Peeta starts to laugh lightly.

“I’m totally just kidding,” he says, scratching the tip of his nose with his forefinger. “Besides, I always wanted to know what this place was like on the inside.”

I park the car in front of reception, biting back a smile when I see his face has flushed pink too, and when I move to get out of the car to go book us a room, Peeta reaches out and grabs my arm.

“Woah, whatcha doing there, Everdeen?”

“I’m—uh—going to pay?” I offer stupidly, pointing toward the reception to prove the point, I guess, that no matter what you say or do, there’s always a way to make yourself look dumber.

“Yeah, I got that part,” he laughs, unbuckling and opening his car door. “But I’m pretty sure I can manage it.”

“But—”

“No buts…. I promised you ten dates, and you’re getting them. But surprise! The last one is your ass driving me to the airport.”

My heart seizes up at the thought of saying goodbye to him, and I already know how I’m going to be—a soppy, sodden mess clinging to him, my illusion of being an ice fortress shattered as I melt into a puddle at his feet.

He sees it written across my face, and his smile falters. “But that’s not _this_ date,” he says pointedly, sliding out of the car. “And not the next one either, so let’s not think about it yet, okay?”

Peeta shuts the car door behind him, and I watch as he walks through the door to reception, the rusty yellow sleigh bell hanging from the handle ringing so loudly I can hear it from inside my car.

He’s right, of course. We can’t let the threat of the future ruin tonight, tarnishing the start of whatever it is we’re going to be now.

A man appears from a back office, some pot-bellied old fart who’s combed over the last five hairs on his head, and I can’t help but notice how he looks a little hesitant when he first sees Peeta—a young kid, by his standards, asking for a room for the night. But Peeta smiles and pulls his wallet out of his back pocket, sliding something out over the wood-paneled counter, and when the old man sees it, a genuine smile comes across his face, and he extends his hand to him in greeting. They shake, and then Peeta gestures to the car, and when the old man looks my way, I fight the urge the slink down in my seat and hide, certain he will see I am entertaining impure thoughts about the boy standing in front of him and whatever room he puts us in.

The old guy gives me a slight nod and a wave, so I nod back and smile, and Peeta glances my way, winking at me.

_He’s lucky I love him, or I’d be tempted to kill him_.

After a couple minutes of exchanging pleasantries and filling out paperwork, Peeta walks out, holding up an old-fashioned key on a massive, diamond-shaped keyring at me and jiggling it in the air. I step out of the car to join him, and he slings his arm around me and plants a featherlight kiss on the side of my head.

Maybe the old guy sees that neither of us has luggage, but I can’t find it in myself to care. He can think whatever he wants—and he might not be wrong.

“What did you say about me?” I ask suspiciously.

“Oh, nothing,” Peeta smirks, and although I know he’s full of shit, for some reason I don’t press my point, letting him have his little secret.

“You won him over pretty quick, even for you,” I say, dodging a wide crack in the pavement and stepping over a still-smoldering cigarette butt, keeping my body pressed closely to his side.

“Yeah, I showed him my military ID.” Peeta squeezes my shoulder and looks down at me. “You get a discount with that sucker, you know,” he adds in a teasing voice. “As long as you stick with me, that is.”

“Oh, is that right?”

“Yep.” His arm falls from my shoulder as we reach the door to our room—12, according to the numbers stamped onto the cheap faux-wood sign that’s glued to the chipped and heavily dented door. “It sounds like I’ve got some work to do, selling you on the idea of me being in the military, so it seemed worth mentioning.”

“Well, I’m sure whatever we saved, it’s worth the cost of not having you around and being in harm’s way.”

“Alright.” He shoulders the door open and looks down at me, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Guess that won’t be the thing that convinces you.”

“Nope,” I reply, making a loud, popping sound with the “p,” and I walked past him, stepping into the dim motel room.

But it’s not just a motel room we walk into. It’s another time and place, some alternate universe where nothing is the same, not even me and him. Where the rules of the game have changed, the conditions of our lives, and it would be easy to forget who we were if we weren’t holding onto each other’s hands.

I look around in awe at the time capsule we’ve entered. “Does your military ID give you access to 1965 too?”

Peeta laughs and closes the door behind him with his free hand, and we walk around the room together, still holding hands, our jaws hanging open at the museum surrounding us. The wallpaper is some sort of flocked tinfoil, the carpeting a threadbare shag, the ceiling a stained and mottled popcorn, and the floral comforter looks like a great-grandmother’s dress—some kind of paisley printed onto polyester, maybe.

“I wouldn’t sleep on that,” he says, pointing to it.

“Wasn’t planning on it… I’m sleeping on you,” I reply without thinking, but when I glance at Peeta my heart cracks open at what I see on his face. Happiness. Blissfully uncomplicated happiness, and I thank whatever stars aligned that brought us to the same restaurant tonight.

It makes me think about fate, and the one that Peeta’s chosen for himself.

“Would it even have been legal, us booking a room together, when this place was built?” I ask, plopping onto the corner of the bed and slipping off my boots.

“Here in Michigan, anyway,” Peeta says, sitting next to me and removing his shoes, slowly and deliberately. “1883. But we still wouldn’t have had an easy time of it.” He leans over and grabs our shoes, taking them over to the front door and neatly placing them in a row next to it.

I think about his answer, how he knows—how he’s clearly researched—the things this country has done and still does to men like my father, to families like mine and to their olive-skinned daughters, how he’s thought about what it would have meant for us, living in another time together, _being_ together, and how he still chooses to defend that country.

“How could you do it?” I ask, looking up at him, unable to stand.

I’ve never been more thankful to have fallen in love with my best friend because I don’t need to explain to him what I’m asking. He _knows_.

He considers his answer as he unzips his coat and hangs it onto the back of a chair, holding his hand out to take mine. I slide mine off and hand it to him, and he hangs mine over his to keep it from touching the furniture. Then he squats down in front of me, placing his hands on my knees, and looks up at me.

“I think there’s more good than there is bad in this world, and it’s worth fighting for,” he tells me. “And people like me need to be the ones standing up, because then it’s the right things we’re fighting for, for the right reasons, in the right way.” He shrugs. “And I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t afraid to fight for the things… and people... I love.” His blue eyes lock on mine and he adds, “To protect them.”

That’s the thing—that’s the very thing. Because it’s everything I would do for him, and now I can’t.

“But how am I going to protect _you_?”

“You will,” he says, squeezing my knees and smiling at me affectionately. “And, besides, you already have. You’ve saved my ass more times than I can count.”

He stands and holds out his hands to me—broad hands, calloused and strong enough to crush, but nimble and gentle enough to cradle, and I love that about him, the choice he makes every day, to be kind and _good_.

“How about a dance? I mean... you kind of owe me. Half of one, anyway,” he teases. He sounds so much more sure of himself this time—or of us—and I smile and place my hands in his, letting him pull me up and into his arms.

“Should we—ah—put on some music?” I ask, trying to pull away to grab my phone, but he wraps his arms tighter around my waist and holds me close.

“Don’t run away again,” he grumbles good-naturedly. “And who gives a shit about the music?”

But without it we’re just standing in each other’s arms, my palms resting against his chest. Through the fabric of his t-shirt I can feel his muscles, unyielding and hard, and I regret that I never touched him like this before to know the difference between then and now and to assess my feelings about it. Experimentally, like I’m inspecting him for damage, I press my hands against him, sliding them from his pectorals down to his abdominals, and pressing again. His stomach muscles tense at my touch—about a thousand of them, by the feel of it.

“What are you doing?” he asks in a low voice, his lips curled up in amusement but his eyes filled with something else. His irises are thin rings engulfed by his pupils, like the pale moon when it’s eclipsed by the shadow of the Earth.

“Peeta. You got jacked,” I tell him, running my hands back up his chest and to his delts, which I squeeze to make my point.

He laughs and looks flustered, and I can tell he’s pleased by what I’ve said even though he tries to play it off as nothing. “That’s what happens when they’ve got you working out twenty-nine hours a day.”

“Yeah, but you were already muscular.” I can’t help but smirk as I think about him wrestling in a singlet, or swimming beside me in Grand Traverse Bay, the way his back muscles moved beneath his pale freckled skin, flushed pink from exertion, as I taught him how to tread water.

He smirks back, not missing the lustful tone of my voice, and he moves my hands, one at a time, wrapping them around the back of his neck, showing me how he wants to be held. Then he rests his hands on my hips, his fingers pressing into me a little less gently than he’d promised to always be with me, and pulls me tightly against him so I can feel the way he wants me too. My eyes widen at the first press of his cock against the soft flesh of my stomach, because there’s no clearer way for Peeta to tell me that he’s done running away, too.

This isn’t going to be an innocent school dance between two children awkwardly trying to navigate their attraction to and feelings for one another. In the rites of passage we’ve gone through, in our own time, of our own making, what we’ve found is something better than innocence, truer than naivete, and more real than purity. This is a dance of experience, two adults choosing to come together, to be together no matter what the costs and risks might be.

And there’s nothing costlier and riskier to a person than love, not even war.

I lean into his body, resting the side of my face against his chest, and I can hear his heart thundering and storming inside of him, matching the restless pace of my own.

“We’re not dancing,” I murmur. “I think we need music.”

“So sing something,” he says, one of his thumbs going rogue, making its way beneath the hem of my shirt to caress the bare skin of my stomach. I gasp at his touch and press my forehead to his chest, but when I don’t otherwise respond, he adds, his voice encouraging and soft, “I’ve always loved your voice.”

For a split second I panic, not knowing where to begin or what to say, everything I know wiped away by the sensation of Peeta’s thumb on my skin. But then it comes to me, a song from an old Christmas movie, one of my favorites, and it’s everything I want him to know.

“ _Like a flower waiting to bloom_ ,” I sing quietly into his shirt, “ _Like a lightbulb in a dark room…_ ”

Peeta’s entire hand makes its way beneath my shirt, his skin hot and searing as he grips my bare waist, his fingers splayed over my skin, branding me as his.

“ _I’m just sitting here… waiting for you… To come on home and… turn me on…_ ”

We’re moving now, swaying with and against each other, slowly, almost imperceptibly, in a way I’ve never danced before.

“ _Like the desert waiting for the rain…. Like a school kid waiting for the spring…_ ”

His hands leave my waist, but I don’t have time to miss their heat before they’re on my face, gripping my chin, his thumbs stroking my jawline to urge me to look up at him, to meet him in this, and to see it through.

“ _I’m just sitting here… waiting for you…_ ” I say more than sing, staring at the light brown freckle that somehow, magically, exists on his upper lip. “ _To come on home and…_ ”

I haven’t finished the line before his mouth is brushing against mine, stealing my breath, robbing me of whatever ability for speech I once had.

Without negotiation, almost telepathically, I take his lower lip between mine, gently pulling at it, and he takes my upper lip, pulling even more gently. Until this moment I never knew a kiss could be so exquisitely choreographed, so soft and needful all at once. After a couple of kisses like this, hanging onto each other’s mouths, relishing the feel of each other’s lips, Peeta angles my head with his hands, and I grip the back of his head, grasping the soft stubble of his hair with my fingertips. We let out impatient sighs as we tug each other closer, mutually declaring our intention to kiss the everloving shit out of each other, and then our kisses become less about each other’s lips and more about the sensuous slide and tangle of our tongues. After the minutes pass by, our kisses grow messy. They’re no longer about the feel of our lips and the stroke of our tongues—they’re about nipping teeth and the taste of each other’s spit—like apple pie—and in the silence of the room, we make soft, sucking sounds as we sigh and groan into each other’s mouths.

Every kiss of ours is new and uncharted, some first I never thought I’d have with him, and there isn’t anything embarrassing or awkward or awful about any of them. Each kiss is better than the last, more perfect, and before I know it I am nudging him back toward the bed because I don’t have the strength to remain standing and to keep doing _this_. My knees tremor, and I break, gasping for air, just as the backs of his knees hit the mattress.

“Hold on,” he says, panting, his lips plump and pink and wet from being kissed and licked and bitten, and he turns around and rips the comforter off the bed in one sharp tug, tossing it onto the ground.

“Don’t want to catch the plague,” he grins, sinking onto the edge of the bed and reaching out, pulling me between his legs.

We catch our breath for a moment, Peeta looking up at me with his hands wrapped around the backs of my thighs, while I look down at him, my hands resting on his shoulders, and our breathless smiles fade as we wordlessly confess everything we want to do to each other, as we come to understand exactly how far we are going to take this tonight.

“Do you have a condom?” I manage to ask him, not recognizing the sound of my own voice. I sound like some boozy wench in a brothel, her voice eroded from hard liquor and harder sex.

He gives a little incredulous laugh, his hands nervously squeezing my thighs. His hands are so high his fingertips send a jolt of desire directly to my core, but he seems oblivious to the fact that he’s practically stroking me through my leggings. “No… I mean…I just came home for Christmas—I didn’t think….”

“That’s okay,” I say, running my hands over his scalp until I’m cupping his jaw. “I—ah—got tested a couple weeks ago, just to be safe, after—”

He nods and swallows, his pink tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. I swoop down and kiss him, trying to capture it, to taste it and play with it, and his hands grip me by the ass and pull me down onto his lap so that I’m straddling him.

As I grip his face he grips my hips, and we kiss each other senseless, until I’m grinding my pelvis down on his and he’s thrusting his up against mine.

“I’m—” he pants between kisses, “I’m clean too.” I kiss him again, not sure why he still feels the need to talk, but then it’s Peeta, and some things are destined never to change. “I requested a full test at basic.” He stills my hips, and I whine a little, trying to wriggle beneath his hands, but he holds me tightly and insists on pulling back far enough to look into my eyes. “There was a girl in Europe,” he tells me, looking regretful. “One night in Amsterdam.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I whisper.

“Because you deserve to know everything.” He strokes my lip with his thumb, one, slow, smooth motion, and leans forward and kisses the tip of my nose.

“Okay.” I sigh, making myself ask. “And the Leegs?”

“ _One_ Leeg,” he answers, sounding aggrieved. “And it was a handjob... over my pants… on the way back from a meet. She told her friends, and the story got embellished. I didn’t start that rumor.”

“No, I didn’t think you did.”

“Katniss,” Peeta says, his hand falling to my thigh, as warm as his breath that fans across my face in shallow, nervous pants. “We don’t have to do this tonight. Or this week. Or anytime, until you’re ready. Now—now that I know… I’ll wait for you. Always. I don’t want you to worry about that.”

I lean into him and press my lips to his, closing my eyes to make it easier to say. “I’m ready now,” I tell him, “for _you_.”

He makes a contented sound, a low rumble in his chest, and kisses me back, slowly, languidly, like we have all the time in the world—or at least until 11 am checkout—and like he intends to use each and every minute of it.

I reach down, grabbing the hem of his shirt, and tug it upward. “Let’s see you then,” I say with a small smile, more nervous than I care to admit about seeing him naked.

“Alright,” he chuckles, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it onto the bedside table.

He hasn’t even looked back at me yet, and my hands are already on him, my fingers tracing the lines of his muscles, the faded freckles on his shoulders, the smattering of soft brown hair on his chest that grows thicker and darker as it trails down, disappearing beneath the waistband of his pants.

He was perfect before—and he is perfect now. That has nothing to do with his muscles and everything to do with the fact that it’s Peeta, and I love him. Who he was, who he is, who he’s meant to me—it turns out that love has the infinite capacity to change and expand, to shift and transmute—to accommodate the beloved.

“You’re beautiful,” I gasp, pushing at his shoulders, and he allows himself to fall back on the bed, my hips cradling his, and I fall forward, chasing him with kisses and licks and curious hands.

At my words he laughs, but the sound dies in his throat when I flick my tongue over one of his nipples.

“Oh fuck,” he hisses, and it inspires me to try things I’ve never done before, every kind of first I can think of, to see what other responses I can get from him.

And he lets me explore him—lets me explore _myself_ by exploring him—not just what he likes, but what I like to do to him, and what doing those things does to me.

I suck on the pulse point behind his ear, and he lightly thrusts upward, his length rubbing my clit through our pants, and the arousal pools between my thighs when I feel him throbbing for me.

When I drag my tongue along the column of his neck or across his torso, he cusses or moans my name, babbling filthy words about my wet, hot mouth and what he wants to do to my pussy. It makes my face flush, the heat spreading along my chest, and down to the place where he wants to bury himself inside me, and I discover that I love his filthy mouth.

When I scratch my nails along the sides of his torso, he laughs and squirms beneath me, and even though it does nothing for him sexually, I discover that it makes me wetter for him, and when I tell him this, that the sound of his laughter makes me ache for him, he clasps my hips and grinds us against each other until I’m panting his name.

He lets me do everything—until my tongue dips beneath his waistband, dancing over the tip of his cock and catching the salty bead of fluid that’s seeping from it, and my fingers reach for his fly. Then he grabs me by my armpits and drags me up along his body to kiss me some more.

“Not yet,” he tells me between kisses, clutching the hem of my shirt and peeling it upward along my torso. When it passes over my breasts and he feels my pebbled nipples, braless, brushing against his skin, he swears, breaking our kiss to harshly pull my shirt over my head like it has personally offended him by existing.

“You’re not wearing a bra,” he groans. “Christ, that’s so fucking sexy.” And before I can tell him I don’t really need to wear one and that I rarely ever do, he’s captured one of my nipples in his mouth and starts sucking and then rolling his tongue over it, massaging me with his tongue every time his teeth lightly bite down, making me squirm and jump and hiss.

It’s this combination—the way his erection is rubbing against me, the way he’s working my breasts, flirting with the line between pain and pleasure, and the way he’s looking at me like I’m the most magnificent thing he’s ever seen—that sends me plummeting over the edge. My arms tremor as my orgasm washes over me, and when I gasp out his name and some string of words that amounts to nothing more than “fuck” and “yes,” Peeta’s head falls back onto the bed, his eyes hooded with satisfaction and desire, and he watches me come on his cock.

I collapse onto his chest, burying my face on his still-cool skin and groan. “Well, now _that’s_ embarrassing.”

At my words his hands stop rubbing circles on my back. “What are you talking about?”

“Peeta, I just came and we both still have our fucking pants on.”

“Um yeah, I noticed,” he says, and when my body starts shaking, I realize it’s because he’s laughing.

“What the hell? Don’t laugh at me.” I sit up and swat at his chest, scowling down at him, but he only laughs harder and grabs my hands, pressing kisses to the insides of my wrists.

“I’m not laughing at you—well, okay, maybe _now_ I am.” He pulls at my hands until I have no choice but to lean over him, our faces inches apart. “Do you honestly have no idea how sexy that was? I’m talking _permanent_ spank bank material, Katniss. That memory alone will keep me company on many a lonely night.” He laughs, and I can hear how agonizingly fond he is of me. “I can’t lie… I’m going to be in the middle of the desert somewhere, late at night, thinking about the time I basically made you come without even having to touch you, and everything is going to be alright with the world.” He cranes his neck and leans forward to plant a kiss on my lips, and then lets his head fall back onto the mattress. When he closes his eyes, he makes an “mmmmm” sound, and a smile curls its way onto his lips. He holds onto my hips and rolls his to rub himself against me, and I squirm, still sensitive to the touch. “I want to make you come again… but this time with my mouth,” he says in a husky, satisfied voice, like it’s something he’s already enjoying.

Lying down in the crook of his arm, I curl myself up against his body and run my fingers over his chest, trailing down curiously to the bulge in his pants. “Okay,” I say, palming him through the fabric of his jeans. He feels long and thick, and at the thought of what that might mean for me, my heart stutters in my chest. “But only because I can’t think of another way to shut you up,” I add jokingly, trying to pretend I’m not terrified at the thought of having sex again—what if I bleed? What if I cry? Peeta would be mortified at the thought of having hurt me.

He rolls us over so he’s leaning over me, and my pulse spikes, my body instinctively tensing up from the memory of what happened the last time a man crawled over me.

“Hey,” he says in a coaxing tone, drawing out the word in the same way you would to encourage a scared animal to trust your intentions. He caresses my face with one hand, looking at me searchingly, seeing through all my defenses. “We’re not gonna do a single thing you don’t want to do. In fact, if you want to spend the rest of the night cuddled up watching infomercials and eating takeout from Monty’s, I’ll consider it the best night of my fucking life, okay?”

I nod and hold his gaze.

“I’m fucking serious.”

“I—I know. And I want to… you know.”

“Then what’s going on?” He curls an arm around me, right over my breasts, knowing me well enough to know I’ll feel freer to talk if I don’t feel so exposed.

“I’m afraid it’s going to hurt… and I’m going to bleed… and that… I don’t know… maybe there’s something wrong with me? What if it’s awful for me, and then that’s awful for you?”

“Well, I don’t know…” Peeta bites his lip thoughtfully, parsing out everything I’ve said or implied. “I mean, I’m not a chick or anything, but I think it’s got to help if you actually want to have sex with the guy. And you know I’m not going to do anything to hurt you. So let’s plan to only do the things that feel good to you, okay? Fuck…” He swipes his hand over his head, absentmindedly searching for the hair that isn’t there. “I’m guessing that the bleeding won’t happen again… but if it does, then I won’t leave you crying and trying to take care of it on your own. I’ll take you to the hospital myself and hold your hand the entire time, and you know it.”

I reach up and rub my hand over his fuzzy hair, pulling him down for a kiss.

“Yeah, I know,” I say.

“And for your information,” he gives me a crooked grin, “eating you out... totally gonna be painless.”

“Oh my god,” I laugh, smacking his chest, and at the sound of my laughter he leans down and nuzzles his face to the side of mine.

“Unless you really make me work for it,” he whispers in my ear. “In which case there could be some associated jaw pain.”

I’m still laughing as he begins to peel my leggings and panties off me, and I love that about him—that Peeta knows exactly the right thing to say and do to make me comfortable.

My breath catches when he curls a hand around my ankle and spreads my legs open—because this is another first for me, a man going down on me. With the bedside lamp still on, I have no idea what he thinks of me, lying naked, sprawled out in front of him, and I put a hand on my stomach, trying to relax myself.

He crawls between my legs and up along my body, hovering over me with a Cheshire cat grin on his face. “ _Fucking gorgeous_ ,” he says, stealing a kiss, and then, before I can talk him out of it, his face is between my legs and—

“ _Oh my god yes_ ,” I cry out as his tongue swipes along my slit and up to my clit, and I writhe beneath him, clamping his head to me.

Peeta murmurs his approval, the vibrations coursing through me, and I half-cry, half-shriek, my hips bucking and refusing to hold still as his tongue flicks back and forth over the swollen kernel. He places a hand on my hips, stilling me, and then he plunges his tongue inside of me, fucking me with it.

And it feels—it feels—

Peeta’s mouth on me, making love to me with that sweet, filthy tongue of his, is the absence of words. The world deconstructs around me into senseless parts, blurs and shapes and colors and sounds, and I grind myself against his face, demanding more and more of him.

“I want—I want—”

I’m gasping and moaning and crying, and I can feel the tears streaming down my face, but they’re from the impossible beauty of it, because my heart is exploding from getting everything it always wanted, from the total absence of pain or fear, the complete clarity of vision that Peeta’s mouth is giving me, and it’s just the two of us, and this new, perfect thing we do.

“I want you,” I manage to gasp, and when I look down at him, he looks up at me, our eyes telling each other that now— _now_ is our time.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice so raspy I don’t recognize it as his. His lips and chin are coated in my arousal, and he swipes at his face with one palm before crawling up my body and wiping my tears away.

“So okay,” I gasp, nodding frantically, unable to bear the thought of Peeta existing outside of me for another second.

He smiles and kisses me, and when our mouths touch I can still taste myself on his tongue—can feel the slick texture of my desire for him—and I moan into his mouth, my hips blindly searching for him.

“Now, Peeta,” I beg him, never surer in my life of anything.

He slides off the bed and stands up, unzipping his pants and pulling them and his boxers down at the same time, impatiently kicking them off leg by leg. He stands before me in all his naked glory, then, but all I can see is his perfect erection, the way it juts confidently out toward me, single-minded in its focus. He isn’t small, and it occurs to me that, no matter how wet and aching I am for him, tonight is probably still going to hurt like a bitch.

But for Peeta, it will be a pain worth feeling, so when he climbs over me, I spread myself wide for him and breath calmly and slowly, keeping my body relaxed for him.

Supporting his weight on one elbow, he cups my face and kisses me, whispering that he’ll be gentle. He gives the back of my pixie cut a tug, and then reaches down between us and guides himself to my entrance. I feel him parting me, the pressure of his head sliding into me, and then he pulls back, and then thrusts a little deeper the second time, pulls back, and then thrusts a little deeper, until—

“Ohhhhhhh,” I moan when he hitches my left leg up and buries himself to the root inside me.

“Did I hurt you?” he gasps, holding still inside of me, and with the way his brow is furrowed, I feel like I’m the one who should be asking.

“Not at all,” I answer, unable to hide my surprise, and he nods, looking relieved. It feels… different and a bit strange, having him inside me—but it’s a feeling I can get used to, that I want to spend the rest of my life knowing.

“Good. Then I’m going to fuck you now, okay?”

I nod, but he’s already begun to move, banking his thrusts as he presses me down into the mattress, and then we dance in a way I’ve never danced before, a tangle of legs and arms and tongues, of undulating hips and slapping skin, of hands gripping each other’s backs, faces, asses—whatever flesh we can reach.

The ancient radiator starts clanging as the pilot light whooshes and the room begins to heat up, or maybe it’s only the sound of the ancient bedsprings protesting under our weight. Or maybe it’s me, smacking my palm to the headboard as Peeta kneels and lifts my hips, hitting a spot inside of me I never knew fucking existed until right this fucking second and what the fuck does it even mean when he fucking—

And with a silent gasp I come again, in a way I’ve never come before. This time it’s a quiet sort of euphoria, a floating and freewheeling in a sun-filled sky. My walls flutter like the wings of a butterfly around Peeta, and I feel him twitching and pulsing inside of me as he comes, and we hold onto the slick skin of each other’s bodies, panting and moaning and falling together.

We lie like that for a while, Peeta still inside of me, slowly softening, covering each other’s faces in light kisses, neither one of us wanting to pull away from the other, but it’s not long before I can feel something leaking out me, spreading to the tops of my thighs.

“I think I’m bleeding, Peeta,” I whimper.

He pulls out of me and sits up, his hands gently spreading my thighs apart. I keep my face locked on his, gauging his reaction to whatever he sees, unable to face another hemorrhage.

When he smiles, I start to cry in relief. “Naw, it’s just my bad,” he says, grabbing my hand and pulling me up off the bed. “C’mon.” He leads me into the bathroom—a garish room covered in its original green tiles—and starts up the shower, pointing to the toilet while he monitors the water temperature.

“You should go,” he says.

“While you’re in here?”

He laughs and rolls his eyes. “Because you draw the line at intimacy when it comes to letting me hear you pee—like that’s even something new with us.”

He makes a fair point, so I sit on the cold porcelain as he watches me urinate. When I wipe, there’s a faint pink tinge to the paper—nothing I can’t handle—but Peeta was right. It really was mostly just his cum.

I sigh in relief and he grins, and I understand now why he insisted on standing there to watch me—he’s still protecting me. Always protecting me.

He slides the shower curtain open and offers his hand to me, helping me step into the tub, and then he climbs in after me. As the hot water cascades down on us, we wash each other clean.

“I miss your hair,” I tell him as I suds his scalp.

“It’s just hair,” he says with a smile, running his fingers through mine, rubbing small circles onto my scalp to work the shampoo into a lather.

“If that were true they wouldn’t make you cut it,” I grumble, closing my eyes and leaning into his touch.

“Well, it’ll grow back.” He kisses me before maneuvering me more directly under the stream to rinse my hair off.

After a couple minutes of silence he finally breaks—one of us has to—because there’s still so much we need to say. “I didn’t really have the choice. Why’d you cut yours?”

“You know why,” I say quietly, running a soapy cloth over his body, my new favorite thing to do—well, my new _second_ most favorite thing to do. “When do you think we’ll get to take another shower together?” I ask.

Peeta smiles sadly. “Not soon enough for me.” He soaps up a washcloth and turns me around so that my back is pressed to his chest, and he runs it across my breasts, my stomach, and then down between my thighs. As he washes me clean, I can feel him growing hard again, his cock pressing against my ass.

“I guess we should have talked about birth control,” he says, and I think about a gumball-shaped lump of cells growing in my uterus, what that would mean for us, if we would end up like my parents, or like his.

As if there were any question which it would be.

“I have an IUD,” I tell him.

“A what now?”

I don’t miss how he’s lathered up the washcloth again, taking a second pass over all the spots he washed on me only seconds ago.

“Ah—it’s an implant, in my uterus. My mom talked me into getting it before I went off to school. Said that, no matter how wonderful and spectacular of a daughter I have been to her, she wanted me to graduate college before I had to change diapers.”

“That’s a smart idea,” Peeta says, turning me around and sinking to his knees to wash my thighs and legs. “So this implant lasts for years?”

“Yeah.” As he massages my leg muscles, I sigh, resting a hand on his shoulder for support and fighting the urge to draw his face to the apex of my thighs, where I’m already wet for him again.

“How many years?” he asks softly. “Five… ten… fifteen?”

I look down at him, the way he’s chewing his lip, and tell him, “I got the one that lasts up to six.”

“That’s not so bad,” he says thoughtfully. “That’ll get you through college, and maybe grad school too, if you want to go.”

“Pee-tahhh.” I grumble his name knowingly, and he stands up. Taking the soapy cloth from him, I toss it onto the towel bar at the back of the shower. When I look back at him, he’s looking at me with a guilty expression on his face, like he knows what I’m about to say. “What would you have said if I’d told you that I wasn’t on birth control?”

He grips my waist, his thumbs brushing my wet skin—and either the sensation is unbearable, or it’s just the way he’s looking at me.

“I’d say I wanted you to graduate college before you had to change diapers.”

I narrow my eyes at him and parrot his own words back to him. “That’s a smart idea.”

He stoops and turns off the water, the stream becoming arctically cold before the water cuts out entirely. “And then I’d say, _after that_ ,” he grabs a towel and begins to dry me off, rubbing my skin briskly with it, the way a man dries off. “I’d say I can imagine worse things than you becoming the mother of my children someday.” He smirks, that same knowing, maddening smirk he gave me when we walked together to this room, and it tells me exactly what he said to the old man in reception about me. He throws the towel over my head, scrubbing my hair dry the same way he must have done for himself for years—no wonder it was always a messy mop of blond tangles. Leaning down, he meets my eyes and repeats, “Someday.”

He dries himself off and wraps his towel around his waist, pulling me into his arms as he leans against the old vanity. I wind my arms around him like a vine, soaking up his warmth and steadiness.

“So what happens next?” he asks.

With that one question, he gives me all the power. And it’s too much for any one person to bear, much less me. My instinct is to run. And I’ll fuck it up. Or I’ll hide in a cupboard somewhere and pretend the world can simply fall away.

“I don’t know,” I whisper.

“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious I’m in love with you,” Peeta says.

I squeeze his waist in reply.

“And,” he adds, sounding a little hesitant, “I think you’re in love with me too.”

Beneath my ear I can hear his heart racing in his chest, anxiously catapulting itself toward me, begging to be loved.

I squeeze his waist again, harder this time.

He sighs, his hand skating up the skin of my back, cradling my head as he presses me tightly to his chest.

“It seems pretty simple, then,” he says.

I think about holidays spent alone, waiting for a phone call—Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, an endless string of days exactly like any other. I think about celebrating his birthday without him, eating a slice of his favorite cake while he’s two thousand miles away. I think about standing around at parties, my back against the wall, watching guys sling their arms around their girlfriends’ shoulders, pressing kisses to their temples before passing them beers. I think about going to tailgates, football parties, bonfires, concerts, and family vacations alone—or without the one person in the world I want to be near, which is the same thing. My best friend. My everything.

And then someday, when we are married, I think about walking across the stage to accept my diploma, shaking the Dean’s hand, and looking out into the crowd, searching for a face that isn’t there. I think about living across the world from all our family and friends, moving from base to base, missing everything—weddings and births and showers and funerals. I think about our children growing up away from our families, not knowing the faces of my parents or their aunts and uncles and cousins.

Or worse—I think about our children not knowing _his_ face. I think about shoveling the snow while I’m eight months pregnant, of laboring and crying and holding my sister’s hand, looking into the wrong pair of blue eyes as I fight to bring our child into this world. I think about holding our baby in the airport, waiting to introduce her to the man she’s been told is her father. I think about another Christmas, some future Christmas, where I spend the evening apart from even our own children, clutching my phone in silent agony, waiting to hear some sign from him, some sign that he’s okay, wherever he is in the world, whatever time it is there, some sign that he’s safe.

I won’t always be able to protect him. He won’t always be able to protect me. And until now, that’s what we’ve always done.

“It doesn’t seem easy to me,” I say, wiping a tear away.

_It seems impossible_.

“Oh, I didn’t say anything about easy.” Peeta kisses the top of my head, and I hear him breath in the scent of me.

I look up into his eyes, and I see all the worry and doubt reflected back at me, but I see all the love too.

“Just simple.”


End file.
